Needles in My Eyes
by Rob DS Zeta
Summary: I thought I was a pro at Fire Emblem. I'd beaten every game that had come out in America, but I'd always had a soft spot for the ones based in Tellius. In my quest to perfect them, however… I may have gotten a bit overzealous.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem or any other licensed material.**

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_I thought I was a pro at Fire Emblem. I'd beaten every game that had come out in America, but I'd always had a soft spot for the ones based in Tellius. In my quest to perfect them, however… I may have gotten a bit overzealous._

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_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Prologue_

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A long time ago, my dad told me that I would probably wind up dead in a sewer somewhere because I didn't have any initiative. I was only twelve at the time. It drove me nuts. My dad was also a lawyer who, much to my personal delight, spent a good term in a cell for embezzlement. Not sure what the correlation is there, but maybe it will give you some insight as to what kind of man he was and why he really said that to me all those years ago.

After the old man went away, I was stuck with my grandparents. It wasn't anything legal, mind. I just didn't like living with Mom. She was a… well… I'll tell you later. Life with Grandmother and Granddaddy was a great thing, though. They were Mom's parents, and they thought the world of me. I was an only child, and Mom's sister was a lesbian, so I was pretty much all they had. I went through high school, got As and Bs, and found myself on the high road to college in a shiny new car when I was eighteen.

It was just after I had moved into my quiet new apartment when something strange happened, though.

I was trying to use up the last few weeks of my summer vacation before classes started. Now, I'm not one to brag, but if I had a lot of time on my hands, I was probably playing a video game to pass it. I played everything. JRPGs, WRPGs, FPS, RTS, Minecraft; the list goes on. One set of games in particular, though, really managed to chew a lot of my time. They were the Fire Emblem games. Really, really good games. 'Chess with statistics and a bigger board' I called it. They were strategy games where you moved characters around and had them battle enemies based on their stats and weapons. I don't know why, but I sunk days into this series of games—all of the ones that had come to America, at least. I played them, took in their wonderful stories, and then conquered their computerized tactics.

There were two games in the series, however, that captured my liking more than others. They were the games set in a place called 'Tellius'. _Path of Radiance_ and _Radiant Dawn_, they were called. I don't really know what it is about them that made them better for me. Maybe it was that they were on a console instead of a handheld. Maybe it was the improved art style and brighter colors. I don't know. Either way, those two games captivated me. They had me trying to perfect them.

To perfect a Fire Emblem game is to finish the game with no 'dead' units. At least, that's what it is in my mind. I'm sure somebody else out there has their own opinions on that, but I have my own beliefs that stay in line with my skills. I just wanted to survive the war with no deaths. Get the job done and bring everybody home. That was what I thought all military commanders strived for.

That was a _long_ time ago.

I was playing the game, Path of Radiance, when it really started. Chapter 11, "Blood Runs Red". The main characters were escaping from their pursuers, only to be found out at the last moment. It was always a chapter that gave me trouble, and it was certainly living up to the reputation.

"Dammit!" I cursed loudly as I watched Nephenee, a playable unit in the game, get taken down because of my rotten luck. As her health points clicked down to empty and her death quote popped up, I reached down and begrudgingly hit the reset button on my Nintendo Gamecube. The game slipped back to the title screen, and I sighed. That was the third time in a row I'd lost Nephenee like that.

"Okay, listen," I said semi-desperately, looking up to the ceiling with my hands clasped. "I don't know if this is asking a lot or not, but I really don't want these people to die. A little luck would be appreciated!"

As the thought of a break crossed my mind, something loud came clattering through the walls. I looked up, confused. What could that have been? Then it came again, and my mind suddenly reminded me that my apartment didn't have a doorbell. It was somebody knocking on my front door, so I scrambled out of my chair and rushed to the living room.

Foregoing the peep hole, I ran a hand through my hair, straightened my shirt, and opened the door. I had been expecting the landlady. What I got instead was about fifty times better.

"Surprise!" a chorus of voices cheered, effectively scaring the hell out of me. There were three people standing on my threshold. One was a young man, the same age as me, with sandy brown hair. The second was a girl with red hair seeping through a skull-emblazoned knit hat. The third was another girl, this one significantly younger, with black hair.

Seeing them all there at the same time managed to instantly put a smile on my face.

"Whoa! Uh… Hey, guys!" I tried not to seem too shocked by their sudden appearance, but failed hilariously. You see, these three individuals were my best friends in the entire world, and seeing them that day meant the world to me.

As they poured into the apartment, the guy and younger girl walking past me, the red head gave me a swift hug. I hugged her back without a thought. This was my cousin and one of my best friends, Beth.

"I brought you some presents," she smiled at me as we broke lock, nodding towards the other two.

"And that's why you're the best cousin ever," I replied with a feeling of genuine happiness that had been eluding me for some time. Then I turned to face my other guests. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

They both snickered at my silly way of talking, which was just my way of acting while I dealt with stress.

"Milo," I looked at the younger girl as she gazed meekly up at me with her honey brown eyes. "How in the world did this nerd drag you all the way here?"

The nerd in question was the other male, my gaming buddy Jake. He and Milo were also cousins, albeit more distant than me and Beth.

"Nerd? Speak for yourself!" Jake took mock offense as Milo flushed ever-so-slightly. I'd always held in a notion that she might have had a crush on me. If she did, she never told me.

"Oh, clam up, you two," Beth interjected on our little nonconversation about being nerds before it could turn into anything before looking at me. "We've only got a few hours. Where do you want to go eat?"

"There's an Italian place downtown," I think on the fly. "How's a pizza sound?"

"Ricatoni's?" Beth catches on. "I love that place!"

"Is it good?" Milo asked, marking the first time she'd spoken since their arrival.

"The best," I assure her before suddenly remembering something. "Let me go turn something off real quick and I'll be with you."

"Playing games until the end of time?" Jake called after me as I slid down the hall.

"You know me," I shrugged as I made the turn into my room. It was a simple motion, reaching down and turning off the Gamecube. I hadn't left the menu screen yet, so I didn't have to worry about lost data. It was just the press of a button and then I could move on to a fun time with friends and family.

It all sounds so harmless… but pressing that button changed my life forever.

The instant I touched the console's power button, the room went dark. Not just 'the lights went out' dark. No, this was 'pitch-fucking-black' dark. I recoiled back, shocked by the sudden lack of light.

"Fuck!" I cursed out of nowhere, not having been able to process what had happened. I was disoriented, which was a bad thing for me. I could have bad balance when I really felt like it, and not being able to see was just the perfect circumstance. I tried to move, and fell almost instantly forward. For some reason, I had expected to slam into my TV stand and knock everything over, but none of that occurred. Instead, I just tottered into air and, much to my sickening horror, kept on going. It felt like I was falling into nothing, which struck me as a terrible feeling. My head spun, my stomach turned, and my feet flailed around in search of ground. If I had been able, I most definitely would have retched.

Then, without any pomp or circumstance, everything became real again. I flopped against something soft, and my mind did a literal flip as things started making sound around me. I heard chickens clucking, doors and windows shutting, cats yowling, and, most importantly, I heard metal clashing against more of itself.

My eyes blasted open and my body forced itself upright. I was in a bed, for what it was worth. This did nothing to stop the vertigo I'd picked up in the darkness from catching up to me, however. Not a full five seconds after sitting up, I was already ducking over the side of the sheets, throwing up. It lasted for about thirty seconds, most of which was just dry heaving since I didn't have much of anything in me to eject. Once it was over, I tried to shake off the cold sweat. That's when I realized that I was wearing clothes.

…but they weren't _my_ clothes.

I looked down at myself incredulously, even though I could only see from the waist up. I had on a dark grey shirt of some kind on, and I could see that there was probably another shirt on underneath it. The sleeves were short, but my arms were protected by leather gauntlets of some kind. I held up my hand to get a better look, seeing that my right hand specifically had the index and middle fingers gloved while the rest went free. I'd seen this before having something to do with archery.

As I examined my hands some more, I threw my legs out from under the bed covers. As it turned out, my legs were sporting new duds as well. My pants were now a tan, sack-like material, and my new kicks were the same color as my shirt. I couldn't help but think that it looked kind of silly, especially when you paired it with the fact that I had bleach blond hair and blue eyes. What was I? An Arian archer spy guy? That was just goofy.

The sound of more clashing metal knocked me out of my confusion, so to speak. I was still confused, but it wasn't distracting me from the outside world anymore. I looked up to find myself in what appeared to be a small, wooden house. There were some things here and there, but nothing really homely. The main article aside from the bed was a table that held some items. I looked for a moment before almost gasping. There, sitting obediently on the table, was a fine looking bow with a quiver of arrows next to it.

My legs practically started moving on their own to get me a better look at the things. I was in awe. It's as simple as that. I'd always been a fan of the bow and arrow, and here some fine were, all but offering themselves to me. There was also a sheathed knife, a shoulder guard, and a small cloth sitting on the table to cap things off. I didn't know what the cloth was, but it felt like Christmas had come early all of the sudden.

Just before I could think to reach down and touch the bow, however, I got a pang of guilt. Did these belong to somebody? I looked around in a paranoid manner, half expecting to see somebody gawking at me from the corner. The house was empty, though, and there weren't any doors other than the one that appeared to lead outside.

There was a window to one wall, the same one with the door. Through there I could see daylight, a dirt path, and an endless horizon. That's when something else came to my ears: the sound of waves breaking.

_Wait!_ I thought to myself. _The ocean, weird clothes, wooden building, bow and arrows, archery equipment… I couldn't be… Could I? No!_

I'll admit it. I felt absolutely insane for even thinking about what I was pondering right there. The thought that crossed my mind was so strange, so twisted, and so _stupid_ that I didn't even want to consider it. Then again, when you really think about it, getting tossed into blackness and falling into an unfamiliar bed is that same kind of stupid. Had I not been so bewildered, I'd probably have thought about that a little harder.

As I stood there, still stunned, I heard some more metal noises followed by a scream. There was fighting going on. That was undeniable. I wanted to know what was going on quite badly now, so I did something stupid without putting much thought into it. I went over to the door, pulled it open, and took a peek outside. It took only a second for my eyes to adjust to the light, and then I saw something I wish I hadn't.

There were a few men in black armor standing not too far away, and my eyes fixated on them just in time to see one get blasted by a fireball.

My jaw nearly fell off.

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**It took a lot of nerve to post this. I hope at least somebody finds it amusing.**

**I've already got a few chapters written. I'll post based on demand/reviews. If I get a few, I'll post the next chapter about Wednesday. If I don't get many, I'll probably wait until Sunday.  
**

**Tips and reviews are appreciated. Thanks for reading.  
**


	2. Blood Runs Red

**Happy 2013! My resolutions are to write, breathe, and drink soda.  
**

**...SUCCESS!**

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_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 1 – Blood Runs Red_

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The fireball exploded on the man, sending him to the ground in a heap of mystically fueled flames. The other armored men around him skittered away, only to be run through with various weapons held by familiar shapes. One was cut down by an axe, and two others took lances to various body parts. As they fell, I could see blood fly about.

It was terrible.

I pulled my head back in and shut the door, not wanting any of it to be real. Those men had been wearing ebon black armor. Those people fighting them had faces, and I'd seen them. I knew their names. Boyd, Oscar, Nephenee, and the fireball had probably come from Soren. It could have been Ilyana, I guess, but that wasn't really important. What _was_ important was that I was there. I had no idea why or how, but I had definitely seen and heard that fireball turn that man into charcoal.

Something was not right. Of that I was positive. Everything else was like Calculus. It just didn't make sense to me. Was I hallucinating? The only way I could think to prove that was to do something painful, so I brought my hands together, balled them, and punched myself in the gut. There was pain, followed by more heaving. Nothing around me changed.

Once I was done with that episode, my mind had officially had it. I walked over to the table and started putting the equipment on. Maybe that punch and all of the puking had knocked some wires loose in my head. I barely thought about it as I put the quiver on like a buckled guitar strap, slid the knife into a slot on the belt I didn't even know I was wearing, mounted the shoulder guard like I'd worn one before, and then picked up the bow without hesitation.

_If this is going to actually happen, then I'm not going to sit around with my thumb up my ass_, I thought for whatever reason. It seemed like a pretty badass thing to think at the time, so I rolled with it. Holding the bow, however, I noticed the piece of cloth as it was the only thing left on the table. What was it doing there?

Unable to spare my curiosity, I picked the fabric up. It was smooth, black, had little strands on each corner, and was amazingly opaque. It kind of made me think of a facemask when I held it up for a closer look. I don't know why, but I put it up against my mouth for a test. Much to my surprise, I could breathe through it without any trouble. That cemented it in my mind. It _had _to be a facemask. But why would I need a facemask? The only reason I could think of was to protect my identity, not that I really needed to. But, then again, what if those guys in black saw me and I couldn't get away with those people? Then it might be useful to have a hidden face.

I was just about done tying on the mask when a small crowd of characters went zipping past the window. I caught sight of their features, recognizing the three from earlier, plus Soren, Rolf, and someone on a flying white horse. Marcia? It had to have been. Hot on their heels, however, was another troop of guys in black armor. This, I felt, was not going to end well. The urge to help overrode every ounce of caution in me and made me pick the bow back up and go straight outside.

Unfortunately, I failed to expect there to be a soldier guarding my door. It was a pull door, so I got a face full of him rather than him getting a face full of wooden fury. He looked pretty mean as he swung around to face me, but not necessarily tough. Probably just a private, relegated to 'guard this house while we go find the enemy' duty. Well, this guy got set in front of the wrong house.

With my bow being not really made for bludgeoning, I quickly reared back my right hand for my best rendition of the Falcon Punch. His lance came up, but I had the presence of mind to angle my bow in its way so that I wouldn't get kebab'd. My fist shot forward and, with a fine crunch, turned the sap's nose into pulp. It was a fine punch, if I do say so myself. I'd always had a good right straight. Probably knocked a few teeth out, actually. He didn't fall over, though, but I wanted him upright. While he was stunned, I took a hold of his arm and swung him headlong into the doorframe. His helmet made a loud clunk before he collapsed to the ground like a bag of blackberries.

Passing some quick looks around, I found that this side of down was mostly quiet now. I could still hear fighting, but where had everyone gone? The smell in the air was a mix of burnt something and what I assumed to be blood. I looked over to where that guy had been smashed by that fireball, seeing him still there for the physical part of things. The earth around him was scorched, and there were still a few embers going in certain spots. Then, as if on cue, I heard another whoosh of fire from around a nearby corner in the direction everyone had run by in.

"Good morning, Vietnam," I muttered to myself as I started moving that way, pulling an arrow out as I went. I remember thinking that it seemed like a strange motion, retrieving the arrow from behind your back, but it really wasn't. As a guy who'd had to wear a wool suit for five years of his life, I was accustomed to scratching the back of my neck, which required similar motions. Thank you, marching band.

I pressed the arrow between my gloved index and middle fingers, noting how I could actually feel the arrow through the leather. It was like I'd been wearing the gloves for a while—like they were worn in. This revelation was downplayed for me, though, seeing as I'd never actually used a bow before. I clutched the arrow as tight as I could, letting it sit on my bow hand while also pulling the string back. It was harder than I expected, but my arms felt like they could get used to the motion.

Then, as I stood there with my bow cocked, I realized something terrible. I had no idea how to aim this thing. Instantly, little alarms started going off in my head. I didn't know what I was doing out here with the sounds of battle raging around. This was nuts, I was stupid, and there were Fire Emblem characters running around.

Of course, when you put it like that, it just becomes all the more surreal when you realize that it's not going away like a dream should.

Before I could even think to uncock the arrow, there came footfalls from around the corner. I instantly backed up to the wall, expecting the worst. Instead, I got two fumbling black armored soldiers running for their lives. They didn't even notice me and kept running past, headed for what I believed to be the village gate. Their backs were to me before I knew it, and an evil thought came to mind. I could try out my aim on these two.

The bow seemingly leveled itself off as I considered the thought. I found my body in position to shoot, a position I didn't even know I knew. I could see down the arrow, its apex in line with the bow string. Was that where the arrow would strike? My fingers did not even need the question to be answered to take the chance. They released the string, and the arrow flew.

My heart skipped a beat when I realized what happened. I flinched heavily, watching the retreating men in shock until something small bounced off of one of their back plates with a tiny spark. That actually surprised me even more. I had hit! Even if it was a completely worthless effort, I had still hit the target!

_Maybe I know what I'm doing after all_, I complemented myself before shaking my head and letting the two guys go. I watched them jump over the burnt guy's remains and keep running. Up ahead of them stood something I thought I'd never see: goddamn dragons. I could see that one of them was green, and on it sat someone in red armor. That would have been Jill, which meant I definitely didn't want to go that way. Jill meant Haar, and all I could remember about Haar was that he was a mean mothertrucker in Radiant Dawn.

So I grimaced and backed off around the corner where everything sounded like it was kicking off. Just like that, the fighting went from the being elsewhere to right in front of me. The small group of characters I had seen earlier was engaged a little further down the way. There was Oscar on his horse, fighting two other mounted knights at the same time. Boyd was close by, trying to lop off the arms of what seemed to be another axeman. Nephenee was there dueling with a soldier close behind the rest, and off to the side I saw what I believed to be Rolf pulling an arrow out of Soren's shoulder. There were also quite a few dead people, all of them appearing to be of Daein orientation.

My eyes went wide as my mind finally, after so many minutes of floundering with the situation, admitted what I'd been thinking.

I was _in_ Path of Radiance. My heart skipped another beat.

Just before I could back away and starting thinking about finding a place to commit suicide, a loud swish caused me to duck. It was a good thing I did, too, because there was a steel lance where my head had been just a second before. Marcia landed before me as I rose back to full height, and I could see her ready to strike me down if I set so much as a foot towards her. Hell, she might have struck me down anyway if I wasn't so quick to think of something to say.

"No!" I put a stopping hand up at her. "I'm on your side!"

It was a simple, but effective statement.

"Wha- Really?" the pegasus knight looked at me like I was crazy. I was inclined to agree with her.

The exchange between me and Marcia didn't have a chance to stay active, as I saw Nephenee hit the ground not too far behind the white winged horse and its pilot. I instinctively moved so that I could get a better look at what was going on, only to see the soldier that she had been fighting was getting ready to deliver a finishing blow.

You'd think I'd have pulled an arrow and shot the guy. Heh… Some bowman I was.

"Look out!" I pointed in a panicked fashion. Not one of my better moments, I'll admit, but Marcia reacted on my call. She twisted around and, quick as lightning, sent her lance sailing through the air and into the Daein soldier's chest. It pierced his chest plate without a fuss, sending him to the grass with a thud.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had just saved Nephenee's life. Think about it.

The skirmish finished quickly after that. Boyd offed his opponent with relative ease, and Rolf managed to put an arrow into one of Oscar's attackers so that the horseman could take care of the other without distraction. Things were not set to be relaxed, however, as it was now time to check on Soren. Everyone who wasn't mounted—sans Nephenee, whom was still getting up—instantly moved to check on the downed mage. He looked alright enough, with that scowl on his face. He jerked a satchel out from his robes and quickly started applying its contents to where the arrow had gotten him. It was a vulnerary, I suspected. I don't know why, but had always thought that vulneraries were liquids. In actuality, they're salves. How about that?

I tentatively approached the group as they all stood on the path, being wary about their surroundings. Marcia had already bounded over to them to pluck her lance out of her kill, and was the first to notice my approach. She didn't look very trusting, making sure to alert Oscar as soon as she could.

"Stop!" the green knight pointed his lance at me. "I suggest you walk away!"

I almost facepalmed. It never occurred to me that my black and grey clothing was going to make people think I was Daein. If anything, I decided to go ahead and get one thing straight with these people.

"I am an enemy of Daein, which makes us natural allies," I went ahead and stated what was obvious to me. By this point, I was close enough to them where I could see their features. They all looked amazing. It's difficult to describe…

"I don't know," Boyd stood forward, his axe pointed at me as well. "You look awful shady to me."

_Yeah,_ I thought. _And you look awful dim witted to me, but I'm not judging you by it._

"We don't have time for this!" Soren stated loudly as Rolf tugged him to his feet. "We need to move before the enemy surrounds us!"

Now, I'd never been a fan of Soren off the battlefield. I can appreciate bluntness right up until you're going out of your way to be offensive. Of course, 'blunt and offensive' was exactly the way to describe Soren's personality. The guy was a total prick, and the odds were he didn't care who knew it or what they thought about it. This stood in contrast of how I preferred to act in public. I didn't talk a lot, but I always tried to be polite. That was how I worked, and it always managed to keep people from being against me. Soren didn't need nice acts, though. He had wicked talent, and plenty of it.

Incidentally, one of those talents was the ability to predict what the enemy would do. Not a full second after he mentioned something about the enemy surrounding us, a line of riders came around from the deeper part of town. Horse knights, all armed with bright swords and adorned with Daein's signature ebon plates. It pissed me off, much to my ever-growing surprise. We all recoiled at the sight as they blocked our progress, with our weapons continuing to be raised. They outnumbered us, however. My memory was struggling for some reason, but I couldn't help but feel like this line of horses existed in the game. If they were, then with them ought to be…

"General Mackoya! More this way!" one of the riders called. That's right. This was the unit under their leader.

Sure enough, out from behind a house strode a diligent white horse with a man on it that seemed to hold a big more regality than the rest of us. He had green hair, a large nose, and facial hair that looked like it really didn't belong there. This was General Mackoya, the boss of this map and underling to the Black Knight himself.

The Black Knight… Actually, he was probably marching around not too far behind us.

"Should we run?" I heard Marcia murmur to anyone listening.

"They've got wyverns at the gates," I remembered seeing Jill. "We're sandwiched."

"Crimean dogs, your bravery is to be commended," Mackoya spoke, his voice reminding me vaguely of an Imperial officer from Star Wars. Actually, no. Imperial officers weren't so well-mannered when addressing rebels. "Lay down your weapons and we will make your ends quick."

We all stood defiant, including myself, even if I was standing behind everyone else. I don't know why, but I seriously felt the need to say something sassy at the general. I knew that I didn't have the nerve to speak up in this kind of situation, but now I really wish I had. It probably would have done wonders for my self-esteem.

"We will not surrender to you, Daein scum!"

My eyes widened as I saw Soren step forward and raise his hand. He had been the one to speak, and I was almost certain that the general was about to whip out that bow he had at his side and just waste the sullen mage, but something completely unexpected managed to occur before anything regretful—towards us, that is—could happen.

"RRAAAAAWGH!"

The roar came over the path like a slam of thunder, cueing a massive blue blur to sweep in from around the corner and smash into one of the knights. It didn't stop with that man, though. It used his horse as a platform and launched at the general like a missile. Mackoya was off his horse with a tiger at his neck before he even had fully turned around.

And just like that, all hell broke loose. Another force of our allies swarmed in from the same way the tiger had and started to cut down the knights without mercy. I could see many more familiar faces, but none of them caught my attention. What really got me was one Daein rider who didn't seem to be quite all there. He was just sitting there, cowering. My arm moved on its own, retrieving an arrow and loading the bow. I pointed, saw his neck down the arrow, and let go.

The bolt hit him almost harmlessly in the arm, much to my great disappointment. Not a full second later, another arrow struck right where I had aimed. The man flopped off his horse, and I shot a look to Rolf. I couldn't believe that I was actually worse than him. Him! He couldn't have been fourteen years old! Then again, I'd never actually touched a bow before, and he was already somewhat seasoned. Compared to me, he was a veteran.

"Everyone! To the ship! To the ship!"

The call was loud and clear. The group was leaving this place and with haste. The entirety of them started running in a line except for Marcia, who was flying straight there like someone who flies should. It wasn't too far away. I could actually see it from where we had been waylaid by Mackoya. It was a large vessel, and for good reason. These people weren't going on a pleasure cruise, and, as my legs enticed me to follow them, it was starting to look like I might be joining them. I wasn't thinking about that at the time, though. I was more focused on the fact that I didn't want to stay in this war-torn burg anymore.

As the group started filing up the gangplank, a few of the last Daeins made a late run at us. Being last in line, my hair climbed on end when they ran at us. I wasn't alone, though. Rolf was still there, as was another man with grey hair. He moved in front of us, and this time I forced myself to draw the arrow. The grey haired man drew out a sword and started fighting against a more fleet-footed swordsman. Rolf shot an arrow, and I pointed mine out to try and focus. Instead of relying on just aiming down the shaft, this time I tried to put my extremely limited understanding of physics to work. I had the string in a little notch in the back of the arrow, so I knew that it was going to fly straight, I just had to figure out where 'straight' was.

An imaginary line extended out from my arrow, causing me to blink for some reason. Then, just like that, the line was touching an incoming soldier's neck. I let go virtually without meaning to, but the man's sudden jolting and keeling over with an arrow in his neck was all the indication I needed that something had been done right. Suddenly, another soldier dropped in time with Rolf's shooting, and the grey haired man defeated his target with a swift slice. There were three more soldiers still coming, but they skidded to a stop at the heels of their dead comrades. They stared at us for only a second before turning tail.

It was an amazing sight, actually. I'll never forget it.

It was a tugging on my arm that reminded me that we were leaving. I snapped around to find that it was Rolf, and we ran up the gangplank together behind the grey haired man whose name was eluding me. I turned back once we were up, seeing that we were the last. With us aboard, the sailors immediately pulled the plank up and someone called for us to depart straight away. There was a massive flapping as the sailed unfurled, and then the boat started to chug its way along the shore.

Just like that, the battle was over. The town started to drift by, but not before I'd caught another sight of that soldier I'd managed to kill. He was face down in a pool of blood. He was dead. I had killed him.

It was about here that I first heard my bow creak. I looked down, seeing my white knuckles gripping the wooden piece very tightly. I drew in a breath, held it, and the breathed it back out.

_What the hell am I doing?_

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**Ain't moral conundrums grand?**

**Thanks to all of the readers, followers, and reviewers! I appreciate all of the kind words and gestures.  
**

**Oh, just to say, the "anyone can die" rule is in full effect. Expect losses. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but they will happen.  
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**Review... or don't. It's your life. You can do whatever you want.  
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	3. Getting Adjusted

_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 2 – Getting Adjusted... Only Not  
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* * *

As I watched the port town drift into the distance, I eventually swapped the bow into my right hand. My left was starting to get sweaty, and I didn't like sweaty palms.

The fact that I had killed a man sat fresh in my mind. It was so… _bizarre_. I was not a violent person, no matter what I said to bolster my ego. Never in my time had I ever honestly thought I would kill someone. I mean, I know that it was really in self-defense and defense of others, but still… A young, morally paragon guy from the Bible belt isn't the kind of person who takes death lightly.

I stood at the side of the ship for at least ten minutes, watching the land sink away into what I guessed was some sort of ocean mist. The world moved around me, but I was stuck. Uncertainly was wracking at my mind. I had killed a man using a weapon that I had no real practice with, and, _on top of that_, it was starting to look like I'd been sucked into a place that really should not have existed. Not to forget that I had also witnessed several other deaths, including at least one by magical fire. I couldn't wrap the logical side of my head around that at all.

Well, not excluding the simple and unhelpful explanation of 'I have been sucked into a video game, so help me God'.

As I thought that to myself, I saw a fish flop out and into the water below. Was it a sign? I couldn't say.

It wasn't until somebody came up and leaned on the siding next to me that I finally remembered that, reality or not, time was not stopping for me to have a breather-slash-mental breakdown.

"Well, that was quite the event, hm?"

I look over to find the grey haired man from earlier staring out into the mist with a somewhat satisfied smirk on his face. Upon getting a better look at his face, I remembered that he was Zihark, a myrmidon class. He was one of the better units in the game, if I recall correctly.

"Uh… Yeah," I spoke, trying not to seem awkward.

"That was a fine shot, by the way," he continued, but I didn't quite follow what he meant for a moment. Then I remembered that he had been standing there when I made my kill shot. "A bit slow, but ultimately effective."

It caught me off guard, being complimented for something I hadn't even really planned on doing. I could hardly remember the pulling of the arrow. It just seemed like I saw the soldier coming, and then my bow was loaded. Everything after that was something else entirely. It's hard to describe, really.

"Thanks," I worked out after a few seconds of doubt. I didn't really want to be thanked for killing somebody, but then I noticed that, had I not made the kill, that soldier would probably have attacked Zihark.

"So, are you with the mercenaries?"

I finally took a real second to examine Zihark while he spoke. He wasn't too much older than me, I guessed, although he had obviously seen more things in his time than I would have in my entire life back… well… you know. I could see it in the way he was idly staring out instead of actually looking around for anything. He was like a personable stone, I thought. He was kind, but not particularly joyous… if that makes any sense at all.

"No," I answered his question. "I just… needed to skip town."

"I see," he peered at me for a second before looking back to the water. "Thanks, nonetheless."

"It's no problem."

He walked away shortly after, possibly picking up on the fact that I wasn't really feeling like talking. To be honest, I felt more like throwing up again. I hope whoever owns that house I woke up in didn't mind cleaning up puke, because I left a lot of it in there. Thankfully, though, the one thing I made sure not to puke on was myself. That would have been bad…

Why are we talking about puke? Let's move on, shall we?

A little time passed, most of which I spent just standing there on the deck watching the sailors work. I got lucky in my choice of standing area, because it seemed that the sailors were moving just about everywhere except for on top of me. It was a hell of a sight, too. At least a dozen men running around, giving orders, taking orders, moving things, pulling other things, and barking like madmen as they did. Not unlike Pirates of the Caribbean, except without Disney… and the captain has seafoam green hair.

_Actually_, I noticed, _Where is Nasir?_

As I noticed the distinct lack of a certain spoiler, I suddenly noticed that, in fact, nobody aside from the crewmembers were on deck at the moment. Everyone else must have gone down into the hold while I wasn't looking. It made me suddenly feel out of place. I could see the hold's door from where I was, so I quickly scooted over and disappeared through it.

The hold smelled awful. That was the first thing I noticed upon entering. It was musty, and the rocking of the ship was about fifty times more noticeable when it was the whole room that was rocking and you were trying to walk through it. Thankfully, I had done my time on a fishing boat, so I had sea legs enough to explore. It wasn't far to go until I found everybody anyway. Not ten steps from the door in, I found a large hall where Ike had everyone assembled and was giving a speech of some sort.

"…Without inclement weather, we should be reaching Begnion within three months."

...Talk about a bad time to enter, no matter how convenient. I couldn't believe what I'd just heard as I walked in and took a discrete spot standing in the back next to Zihark.

"Three months?!" cried out the already somewhat familiar voice of Boyd.

"That's right," Ike stated without seeming to be affected by Boyd's short outburst. His lack of movement made the axeman lower himself, but the impact was already inset. Many of the people present were looking around and whispering.

"Normally, a trip from Crimea to Begnion would take only two months," Nasir spoke up, having been standing behind Ike. "However, pirates have become more and more prominent along the fastest routes. In order to evade encounters, we will be taking a more scenic course. Your commander and our dear princess have both voted in favor of this plan."

Upon her mention, I take the time to notice Princess Elincia standing at a close but cordial distance to Ike. She was surprisingly more regal than I remembered her being in the game, if only because she didn't have that terrible look on her face.

Anyway, the explanation seemed to placate the murmurs, but I could still feel a slight static in the air. It was probably the start of cabin fever, which I would no doubt have in less than a week. I hadn't been cooped like this since I was sixteen, and even then I still got to go to school. Three months on ship with thirty-to-forty other people, several of which are trained killers? That was something I'd never even imagined until it was presented as my immediate future.

"But what should we do in the meantime, Commander Ike?" came another voice, this one female and much more mature than Boyd's. I could see the massive red braid of Titania sitting at the front of the gathering. Her face was not curious, but more expectant. She had asked that as a prompt, not an actual question.

"Train," Ike answered simply and firmly. "There's no telling what will be waiting for us on the other side of this journey. No matter what, though, we can't be unprepared."

I have to say, Ike seemed to have fallen pretty well into the role of leader. It hadn't been too long in the game since his father had died, causing the poor lad to be thrust into the command of what was quickly becoming a small army of people. Of course, I had no way of knowing how long it had been since that had actually happened. They had been to Castle Gallia and back, which was quite a ways if my memory of the Tellius world map was to be trusted.

When the meeting finally broke, I made sure to be the first one out of the meeting room. I was back on deck in and instant, finding that the sailors seemed to have dispersed while we weren't looking. This left the deck looking much more spacious, so I found myself a spot and took a seat to sort out my thoughts.

Damn, there sure was a lot to think about. I was a rational guy, not the type to outright panic when faced with the insane and unknown. I had always wondered what it would be like to be a character in a game, in fact, but wondering and believing were two different things entirely. One was the edge of crazy, and the other was so far on the bad side of that edge that you couldn't even see it anymore. I was in Tellius, for God's sake. It didn't make any damn sense, and there sure as hell wasn't any big circumstance to help me. If I hadn't just come from playing the game, then I probably wouldn't have known what to do at all. Thank goodness I had already been dressed…

After getting the big thought of where I was out of the way, my mind turned to something much worse. My friends, Jake, Beth, and Milo. What had happened to them? Were they still waiting for me in the other room? Had they noticed that I was gone? Were they calling the cops? What about my family? Was I even gone at all? The thought of death rolled around a heavy, spiky ball in my head. Had I died? Was Beth crying over my corpse right now? Or was I just in a coma? If so, what put me there? Had the power surged, zapping me as I pressed that button? It seemed absurd, honestly. After all, electricity didn't travel through plastic… or, at least, I didn't think it did.

After a long time, my head finally just told me to stop whining and deal with it. So I did. If this was a dream, I would wake up at some point. If it wasn't a dream, then things could only get worse. Either way, I didn't seem to have the ability to fight it. I pinched myself, bit at my cheek, clenched my teeth, dug my toes in, sniffed hard, and stretched my arms. By the end of it all, I was nearly out of breath. Even worse, I was still on a ship. It was a fictional ship full of fictional people on a fictional ocean headed to a fictional country on a fictional continent in a fictional world where fiction happened.

_Shit like this is why they say that life isn't fair_.

"You."

The second-person personal pronoun was so well spoken and pointed that I could easily tell that it was meant for me. Of course, it helped that its speaker just happened to grab me by the shoulder and turn me around.

It was Ike, Oscar and Soren at his flanks. Their eyes all bore into me, each coming off slightly different. Ike's were serious and rigid, but not necessarily carrying any real definition of anger. He was looking me over, but he bore no will beyond. Soren's eyes needed only an instant to be judged. He had utter disdain for me, and I wasn't surprised. I had just come up out of the woodwork, and I probably looked about five times shadier than my counterpart in this case, Zihark. Oscar, in spite of his in-game image, did have visible eyes. They were very grassy green and squinty, but eyes nonetheless. Like Ike, they were serious, but not to the point of antagonism.

"You helped us in the battle?" Ike asked me once he'd given me a quick once-over. I was taken aback slightly by the question, not having been expecting it to be leading the conversation.

"Yes," I answered after a moment. It wasn't really like I anything to hide.

…_nothing worth telling, at least._

"Why?"

I had to give Ike credit. As I said about Soren, I could appreciate his bluntness. Unlike Soren, however, Ike was much more polite when he wanted to be. He was a prime example of a dauntless commanding officer. He was strong, understanding, and willing. Those three qualities were all I needed to have respect for him.

"Better to throw my lot in with you than sit in that Daein-controlled town," I gave a simple and hopefully easily accepted answer.

Ike's brow furrowed at me a little, and Soren didn't seem amused.

"I don't like this, Ike," the surly mage grimaced, causing me to instinctively shoot him a wary look. He didn't trust me. Not that I had expected him to, but I would've appreciated the benefit of the doubt, at the very least.

"This isn't a short trip," Ike spoke to me plainly, having cast only a slight glance to Soren in acknowledgment. "We're travelling to Begnion. This vessel won't make landfall for three months."

"I'm aware," I nodded. "I'll try my best not to be a bother."

"Yes… well…"

I couldn't help but grin slightly under my mask. Had I just out-blunted Ike? Ike, the man of no emotion! That's what I used to call him a long time ago. To render him speechless with bluntness said something, and it was likely something negative towards me. I won't deny being a blunt person sometimes, but that wasn't how I acted around friends.

Then again, I wasn't friends with Ike. Not at the moment, anyway.

"Commander Ike!"

We all looked over to see a young woman with purple hair standing just out from the cabin. She was waving our fearless leader over with quite a bit of fervor, at which he and Soren exchanged a glance and went running. Oscar stayed, only staring after them like I was.

"That was convenient," I said without really thinking about it.

"How so?" Oscar inquired without actually turning.

"Awkward conversations aren't my specialty," I shrug, accepting the fact that I was going to have to talk to him now.

Ike and Soren disappeared through the cabin door, so I went ahead and took back to watching the sea move. The mist had cleared, and land was visible some distance away. We had been at sail for about an hour by this time, so I was slightly amazed that we had gotten so far away already. Not that I had any knowledge of sailing to suggest that we were not moving fast at all. In fact, I knew next to nothing about sailing. All but one or two of my ventures on the water before this one had been on a motorboat, and the rest were paddle-based. Rafting on the Ocoee. Now _that_ was a damn adventure.

"Oh!" Oscar spoke up, causing me to turn around again to face him. I tried not to seem exasperated about it, but all I really wanted was to be left alone.

"I just wanted to say thanks," he smiled at me, his tone coming off as slightly uncomfortable. "That other archer you were with at the bottom of the gangplank is my brother. You helped him… so thank you."

"Er, no problem," I fidgeted a little at being thanked for my sudden skill at killing once again.

"May I ask your name, friend?"

Just like that, I was thrown for another loop. Like all the ones before it, it was unexpected and unwanted. My name was something I wasn't proud of. It wasn't that it was lame or embarrassing. It was just something I didn't like and didn't want to share. Many was the time I'd met someone I'd never met or was never going to see again and told them some asinine alias.

For some reason, right then, standing in front of this perfectly nice and smiling fellow whom I knew was going to be a constant in my future, I decided to follow up on that 'tradition'.

"Arrow," I said without a second thought. It was an easy alias, perfectly acceptable in the kind of place where not everything was standard. This land, Tellius, was such a place. After all, there were two bosses later in the series that were named Pain and Agony, I believe. Who's to say that there isn't someone named 'Arrow'?

"Arrow?" he gave it a moment to process. "Yes, well, thank you again, Arrow. I'm Oscar."

"You're welcome, Oscar," I nodded.

As he smiled back at me, for whatever reason, I couldn't help but feel like I had just made my first real friendship in what was going to be a very, very long journey.

Damn… I wish I could always have been so right with my feelings.

More time passed, and the sun eventually went down. When someone finally came on deck and yelled that supper was ready, I didn't know what to think. Everybody who was up shuffled over and went on down, and I followed them at a distance. Eventually, I found myself in the same hall where Ike had given his speech earlier. There were two tables that ran the length of the room, and I eventually found myself seated at the furthest end of one's side. At my left was Marcia, and across from me was the intriguing form of the real cat woman, Lethe.

There were no chairs at the table, which were low set so that we could sit and eat comfortably on the floor anyhow. I was sitting cross-legged on the slightly damp wooden flooring like a kindergartener at snack time, wondering what in the world was going to be given to me to eat. My confidence was low, considering that we were on a ship and would be for, as we've established several times now, the next three months. We had to ration what we had…

…and that meant no drinking water. Not at that point, anyway.

"I've never been by ship before," Marcia spoke, her voice coming off with a slightly different accent than the others I'd spoken to that day. Ike and the mercenaries—Crimea—had a more American feel to them, while Zihark and Mackoya—Daein—had a more firm-but-clear Queen's English impression. Marcia's was somewhere deeper than that, with her being from Begnion. My only idea at the time was that these were regional accents, which made more sense than most things that were going on with me at the time.

"Do you think the food's going to be good?" Marcia continued the conversation, looking to me.

"I've never 'been by ship' either," I gave a shrug.

"If the smell is any indication, it's going to be mutton, flatbread, and retched ale," Lethe gave her two cents, surprising me with her comparatively deep voice and uninflected enunciation. Her attitude was similar to Soren, but with a more general 'I just don't want to be here' feel than Soren and his 'I hate everything' ways.

Her words didn't help my enthusiasm. Mutton, I could remember, was sheep, which I'd never eaten before. Flatbread and ale were two things that had never tickled my fancy either. Flatbread, in my opinion, was for health nuts, and ale was… well… _ale_. I wasn't old enough to drink where I'd come from.

Of course, the girl with the cat senses was right. We were all served exactly what she had predicted, but no one complained. Lethe and Mordecai, whom was taking up two persons' worth of space next to her, both made disgusted faces at the ale, but ate and drank without a word. I followed their example, bearing it and thinking of the nutritional benefits from simply having food and drink running through my systems.

About an hour later, I was throwing up again.

* * *

**Sunday update, just like I said... I think.**

**Chapter 3 of 4 completed. I'll post the next one either Wednesday or next Sunday depending on reaction/demand.**

**Not sure how far I'll continue with this. As much as I hate to say it, this really isn't my focus at the moment. Still, I'm glad you all like it and I'm thankful for the praise and tips.**


	4. On the Waves

_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 3 – On the Waves  
_

* * *

Sum up life on the ship in two words? Simple.

'_Damn tough.'_

It only took until that first night to realize that I was going to be in deep shit as my body adjusted to a new way of life. Suddenly, I didn't have sustenance on demand. Food on the ship was regulated, and I didn't have the nerve to try and knick a spare flatbread from the stores after puking my supper up. There was some big sailor guy guarding the door, and I wasn't in half the shape I needed to take him without using a weapon.

Sleeping was also tough. Never in my life had I been forced to share a room with someone in the manner I had to on the ship. It was a mass bunking situation, with each sex to a room and nothing but a small cot to each name. The cots were tightly packed, and I got stuck next to the snoring machine that was Brom and the smelly wall. It was less than ideal, especially seeing as my cot smelled like a barf bag. Were I not so exhausted, I'd probably have never fallen asleep that first night.

Daily life was, to oversimplify things, lackluster. We woke up, ate, trained, ate again, sat around, ate again, and then went to bed. If it was your bath day, and it rarely was, then you got to do that at some point. During the whole trip, I only took three baths. One a month. Thankfully, my nose was good at getting accustomed to widespread odors. My room back home had never exactly smelled of roses, if you catch my drift.

Inwardly, I spent a lot of my down time thinking about home. Were I confident in my ability to write and not get questioned about the fact that I wrote English, I'd have taken up a journal or possibly a novel simply to bide my time. Instead, I just got to mull and be miserable for the first two weeks. It wasn't until I got a few questions about why I 'seemed so melancholy' that I finally started pushing thoughts of home out of my mind. I just had to have faith that everything was alright without me there.

Outwardly, I fell into the façade of a guy named Arrow pretty quickly and without fuss. I was just a guy with a bow who'd traveled all his life. I wasn't from anywhere, I didn't know anybody, and I wasn't very personable. A few of the mercenaries looked at me like I might have been a thief or something, but I wasn't really able to help that. I didn't care if they thought I was a thief or a murderer or whatever so long as they believed it.

I practiced with the bow every day. Rolf built a target up with help from Oscar and allowed me to use it with him. I tried my best to be stealthy while I examined his technique and asked him for pointers. He was better than me—_a lot_ _better_ when we first started. He could quickdraw arrows and shoot faster than I could load the bow properly. Shinon had obviously taught him well before taking his leave in the wake of Greil's death and Ike's taking up the mantle. It occurred to me as I watched Rolf one day that perhaps Shinon had been working on the boy to be his replacement for when Ike inevitably took over as commander. It would make sense, seeing how dedicated the man was to Greil. He wouldn't just leave the old guy hanging, I believe. But when the old guy was just gone, then Shinon was just the type to get up and storm away.

_What a dick,_ I couldn't help but think.

After about the first two weeks, I eventually came to realization that my body was a little under in terms of performance. Most of the other males on the ship were pretty muscular, and I was skinny as a bean pole. So, one morning I began exercising. I started with pushups and crunches, and then moved on to full sit-ups, squats, and lifting the heavy barrels in the hold. I had to do it moderation, considering the food situation, but everyone was in a similar way. I would usually forego too much bow training on exercise days anyway. By the end of the first month, I was able to do pull-ups on the support beams in the mess hall.

Oh, and laundry day was one hell of an experience. That was another once a month occasion…

Anyway, the cruise carried on slowly and, after some time, methodically. During that first month, as time was counted by me making small etches on the wall with my knife, I started learn things about myself. For example, I learned that archery is really only as hard as you make it. As I continued my training and gathered tips from Rolf, I started to understand the this-and-that of how it really worked. We both got to the point of hitting the middle of the target almost every time, and then we'd start trying to shoot in a different way. We started shooting while twisting our bodies or after a quick turn or a dodge roll. He was still better than me, but I felt like I was getting closer. My exercise was improving my speed and endurance.

That was not all I learned, though. There were several mental things I discovered, such as how I never really thought about my kill back in town or the other dead bodies I'd seen that day. I'd never really been exposed to that kind of thing before outside of movies or video games before, so I didn't really know how I'd react to it. Once I truly started examining it, I realized that it wasn't really bothering me. Ironically, _that_ did indeed bother me. I knew I could be a cold bastard sometimes, but I never thought that I'd take death lighter than anyone else. After that initial day's sickness, however, I just let it fade away. Perhaps I lost myself too much in life on the ship? I'm honestly not sure.

…There is one last thing I learned about myself—one _major_ thing. I can talk about it easily now, but, man, it seriously scared me when I first found it out.

It was my first bath day. The way we had things scheduled had it where two or three people took a bath a day. I don't know why, but that's just the way things were. I was first that day, thank goodness, and I was excited. I knew that there wasn't going to be anything special about it. If Boyd's bickering had been anything to go by, then the water was muggy, the soap smelled funny, and the tub was way too small. I didn't mind, though. I just wanted to be clean. My hair had never gone a week without a wash before, and here it was after a month with nothing more than rain water having graced it.

It was while I was sitting there, with my arms and legs hanging over the side of what was pretty much a relatively large bucket, scrubbing every inch of my body with an uncomfortable brush, that I discovered that my right hand had this strange black mark on it. I thought it was just grime at first, so I scrubbed at it, but it didn't go away. So I scrubbed it and scrubbed it and scrubbed it some more. I scrubbed it until that spot was so raw it hurt without being touched. Nothing changed about the mark, except maybe it was a little pinker like the skin around it thanks to my brush work.

I stared at that mark for God knows how long. The instant I realized that it wasn't just dirt, my mind started racing. I could see an image of one of the games' main characters, Micaiah, holding up her hand and showing off a similar mark. It was her brand, the symbol proving that she was of both beorc and laguz blood—'beorc' being the humans and 'laguz' being the animal-like people, such as Lethe. That's when the fear set in. This mark wasn't just a mark of proof. It was a mark revealing that something really was wrong with me.

Suddenly, everything that I had been suppressing concerning what had happened to me came crashing to the forefront of my mind. I was in Tellius, of this I as becoming painstakingly aware, but now I was wondering _how_ I had come here. _Why_ I had come here. Also, just as importantly, _why_ was I suddenly a Branded? Nobody from my world would ever be Branded for the very simple reason that laguz didn't exist there. Yet, I was. What sense did that make? None. Not a single microscopic bit.

Once I was done with the bath, I dried myself and got dressed very quickly before making tracks for the deck. I needed some air.

When I needed air on the ship, I found that the best place to go was the crow's nest. I'd take the rest of the on-duty sailor's shift and let him go get some rest. Nasir, our esteemed captain and to-be escort through Begnion, worked those boys to the bone, so I felt at least somewhat decent in giving one of them some time to catch some extra sleep.

The crow's nest was a great thing. It was high up, which meant that all of the noise below was far away enough to not matter. Of course, being the highest point on the ship, it also rocked the most when the sea got choppy. But it was calm that day, so at least I could focus on just one relaxing thing that was not my newly discovered brand or the fact that I was forever away from home or anything else that severely weighed upon my sanity.

Working the nest was easy. You just looked around… _everywhere_. The goal was to see anything that might be incoming to affect the trip before it could really get the jump on you. You could look through the telescope, but the one we had wasn't very good. It was old, and one of the lenses was cracked, so whatever you saw through it always had a disjointed line skewing its image. I preferred to just look out ahead with my bare eyes, watching seagulls fly by and occasionally take note of some fish that might be flopping about. Sometimes the gulls caught the fish. Sometimes the fish caught the gull and dragged it underwater. One time I even saw a shark breach. It all made me wonder if this was how it was back in the old days, when sailing was what you had to do to get around in a timely manner. It definitely raised my respect for people back then. Living on a sailing ship was way tougher than the trivial first-world problems I had back home.

In just that month of living on the ship, I felt _really_ far away from home.

"Mr. Arrow?"

I jumped at the random girl's voice, spinning around to find the brown hair of Ike's younger sister, Mist, poking up over the side of the nest with her sea green eyes. Of everyone on this ship, Mist had been certainly trying the most valiantly to become friends with me. We exchanged pleasantries at least once a day and, by this point in time, had even shared a few conversations. I didn't try to reject her, mainly because I knew she wouldn't stop trying if I did. In the game, I remember there being a bit about her roaming around the ship with a plate of food for Volke.

To clarify, I don't think I had even _heard_ about Volke at this point in our journey. He was there, though. I knew that because I'd actually seen Mist poking her head into rooms with a plate of food in her hands. Nobody else missed meals unless they were ill. That guy had to be the most anti-social person ever.

"Miss Mist," I called her in response to the fact that she always called me 'mister'. I was looking down at her from my spot in the nest. She had her hands on the ridge, and I could hear her shoes attempting to get a proper hold so that she could pull herself in. The last bit of the climb into the nest could be a doozy. I think maybe one of the ladder up's spokes might have fallen off at some point in the past.

As I waited for the girl to get her footing, a sharp kick hit the side of the nest. Mist's eyes grew wide, and she slumped against the side. I was at her assistance before the shriek even escaped her mouth, reaching over and pulling her in by her underarms. She rolled over the side and fell into the wooden basket with light thud, much to my amusement.

"Nice of you join me," I said in pure jest as she rubbed her underarms where they had scraped against the side of the nest.

"Yeah…" she gave a half-hearted laugh, still catching some of the wind she might have lost. "Sorry about that."

"Not a problem," I smirked as I took a lean against the side of the nest and looked back out of the ocean. I had no problem with smirking because I knew she couldn't really see it through the mask. I wore it at all times, if only to keep up appearances. "Any reason you come up?"

"Oh, I… I spilled some water in the kitchen, and the cook got mad at me," she sighed, picking herself up and looking in the same direction I was.

"Mistakes happen," I said, not wanting her to be up here just to brood at me. There was enough brooding with just me. "I'm sure he'll forgive you after a while."

"I don't know. He was pretty mad," she noted, drooping herself over the side and casting an almost bored gaze down onto the deck. The main spectacle at the moment was Boyd and Brom having a spar with some practice poles. The poles were used for nonlethal lance practice, just like wooden swords and axes. I'd seen Boyd sparring with Oscar and Titania in a similar fashion, so I guess he was skilled enough to help Brom as well.

"Did you apologize?"

"Huh?" Mist looked up at me, apparently having been transfixed by the spar.

"Did you apologize to the cook?" I reiterated the question.

"O-Of course I did," she acted somewhat insulted that I'd even insinuate she hadn't. "I think I said I was sorry at least… ten times."

"Then, as I said, I'm sure he'll forgive you after a while," I tried to remain confident for her.

One thing I had started to notice in that first month was that some of the mercenaries were starting to become downtrodden. It was probably from boredom, considering that they had all lived reasonably exciting lives in wide open spaces before now. It was different for me because this was all new to my mind. Even with that, though, I still found myself mulling about with nothing to do. That was usually when I'd start to think of home, which was bad. That was another reason why I started exercising. It took my mind off things.

"You're probably right," she accepted that for now, though I couldn't tell if she actually believed me or if she just didn't feel like arguing about it. We sat still for a few minutes, during which I wondered why she had come here to talk to me about this whole spilled water thing. The deduction I eventually came to was that this was part of her 'becoming my friend' and I was at the stage where she would gauge how well I could comfort her in a time of woe.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was what I came up with nonetheless.

"What's that?"

I looked up, suddenly feeling a lurch in my heart. I hadn't been thinking about it at the moment, but the real reason I liked to take watches in the crow's nest was so I could look out for the pirate ravens that were due to attack us as we were passing by Goldoa, the land of the dragons. Not that I knew where the hell we were, but the land that we were passing by did seem to be having less of what I believed to be Gallia's lush forests. Gallia bordered Goldoa northwardly, so…

I stretched out the old telescope and got myself a better look at what Mist was pointing at. There, off in the distance, I saw a bunch of flittering shapes hopping in and out of the water. I was surprised. I hadn't seen a sight like that in quite a while.

"Dolphins?"

"What?"

I handed the scope to Mist, whom proceeded to notice that the scope was a piece of junk and started to lean forward in attempt to increase the quality of her spying. I watched with not-quite bated breath as she leaned onto the side of the nest, then over it, and then even farther. One of her legs came up, allowing her to go as far as she possibly could without sprouting wings.

"Oh, wow!" she exclaimed as I cautiously hovered a hand over the back of her shirt. No way in hell was I going to let her fall. All I needed was Ike on my case because I let his sister fall three stories when I could have just as easily in good conscience just said 'Be careful!'

In all honesty, I'm not sure why I didn't just actually say that to her. I was a terrible sibling.

"Mist! What are you doing up there?"

Cue the party pooper patrol, just as someone was doing something not very safe.

Mist turned the telescope towards where the voice had come from on deck, not even bothering to come back into the nest.

"Titania! There's a pack of giant fish jumping out of the water!" she called down to the deputy-commander of the Greil Mercenaries, the steadfast Titania. I went ahead and took this chance to grab Mist's shirt—_only_ her shirt—and pull her back in.

"Ike said not to bother the sailors," Titania called up as both of Mist's shoes touched flooring once again.

I always liked Titania. She was nice in the games, and it definitely carried over into this peculiar excuse for reality. But she was also strict, and I could appreciate that in somebody who was basically the mother figure to a pack of rowdy men. She was also very strong, even outside of the battle. One day I caught her doing push-ups where she swapped hands each push. That impressed me heavily, mainly because I couldn't even do one-handed push-ups yet.

"Mr. Arrow's not a sailor," Mist protested, unconsciously dragging me into the dispute. I meekly poked my head over the side of the nest. The woman's green eyes glared at me. In spite of my reverence of her, Titania was one of the mercenaries that didn't think much of me.

"Mist, come down from there," the paladin gave the order, at which I just leaned back to the other side of the nest and rolled my eyes.

"Better do what she says," I suggested, and Mist looked back at me. Her face bore disappointment, but winked at her to say that it was alright. She nodded and left without another word, and that was the last I really saw of her for a few days. I can only assume that Titania gave her a stern talking to about being around someone '_like me_'.

Thinking back on it, the only members of the Greil Mercenaries—aside from Mist—that were really okay with me were the three brothers. Rolf knew me from training every day and Oscar had managed to figure that I was good person after that first day. Boyd had been suspicious early in, and I suspected that he still was. Oscar and Rolf, however, must have spoken to him in my favor, though, because he managed to lighten up after a bit.

The rest of the mercenaries… Well, to tell the truth, I wasn't really helping myself when it came to them. Mist was one matter, but the others never truly tried to talk to me. Soren hated my guts, of that I was easily certain. Titania, being the protective mother type, saw me as a shadowy character and didn't want her kids playing with me. I never really ever saw Rhys during that first month outside of the bunkroom. He had taken ill during the first week and didn't recover for some time. Ike simply hadn't gotten around to me yet. I had watched him for a while, noting how he always seemed to be doing something. Most of the time that something was training. He was also logging a journal, I saw, and talking with his closer crewmembers. I decided to be patient with him. He was a busy man, and would talk to me on his own accord if he really wanted to.

There was also Mia. I'll get to her in a minute.

Noon came and went, and I was relieved shortly after so that I could go eat lunch. Lunch usually consisted of something lousy and not worthy of being called a full meal. Today it was peas and a bit of salted side pork. I barely survived. Even with the ale, that salted pork was hell. Imagine bacon, but without the happiness. In fact, substitute the happiness with salt. Now imagine having to eat with nothing but syrupy ale and shitty peas.

If there was one thing I could honestly say that I hated about the whole trip, it was definitely the food.

After eating and, like a smart person, waiting thirty minutes to make sure the food stayed down, I went back out on deck to watch the others train. I had decided to study the others in their styles one day after watching Oscar outspar Zihark with a few flashy moves. It made me wonder what I could learn about avoiding enemy attacks. Perhaps, I thought, if I saw enough attacks performed I could start predicting them. Beyond that, I could evade them. The easiest way to not die in war is to not get injured, after all.

Upon walking out onto the deck, the first thing I found was the sight of Boyd defending himself from the wooden sword hurricane that was Mia.

Mia was amazing. It's as simple as that. I remember the first time I saw her fight. She was sparring against Ike, holding her own against him fairly well. Then Ike and Boy teamed up at her request. She _still_ held them both off. Knocked them both down, even! It blew my mind. I remember that she had been pretty good in the games, but now I was seeing why she had managed to be a mercenary on her own. before being hired by Crimea. She was a force to be reckoned with. Then you had to combine that with her extreme personality. She exercised just as much as I did, if only in a different way. I could definitely see her being one of the best we had in the future.

This was most evidenced as I watched her whip the wooden sword across Boyd's arms, sending his wood axe to the floor.

"Agh!" the fighter grunted, pulling his arms away and taking a big step back from Mia's still ready form. "That's enough, Mia!"

"Oh… C'mon!" she breathed heavily, sweating profusely from what had likely been an extended session for her. "I'm not tired yet!"

As I stood just outside the cabin door, Mia's gaze suddenly fell upon me. She tilted her weapon my way, a look in her eye I could only call _berserk_.

"How about you, huh?"

Normally, I would have declined, but my mind suddenly decided to lay upon me the fact that I hadn't given much effort to training that day. Besides, Mia was already tired. She couldn't hurt me too badly, right?

"Alright," I agreed, reaching over to the stock of practice weapons that were kept by the door for easy access. I pulled a pole, which I figured would be easiest to handle against Mia's zany sword fighting.

The instant I picked out the pole, Mia started strafing. I matched her steps best I could, and Boyd took this opportunity to go nurse his hands. She stared at me for a while, her wild eyes practically glowing green. I didn't even realize that I was getting lost in them until she jolted forward and struck.

My arms barely twisted enough to block the strike, and my hands shuddered at the loud impact. It felt more like she was hitting me with a hammer instead of a sword. She didn't miss a beat, either. With a second's hesitation, she twirled the blade around and came down in the other direction, another move I barely managed to block. In just those two moves, I already knew that I was in over my head.

She kept at it, growling and yelling as she beat her weapon against mine unceasingly. Sometimes she wouldn't even try to change her pattern. It was a just a continuous steam of strike after strike. My arms felt like they were on fire after the first couple of minutes, and I never even got a chance to strike back. I could see that people were starting to crowd around for whatever reason, but I couldn't pay them much attention for fear of taking one of Mia's slices to the ribs or head.

Then, with one particularly strong blow, she tore the pole right out of my hands. I was shocked, but then I saw that she was still coming. The only thing I could do was pull my knife out and let it take the shot first. I locked up my arm and clenched my fist as hard as I could, causing the whole of the impact to spread painfully through my body.

I guess Mia's grip on her sword was slipping, though, because she nearly dropped her sword when our weapons collided. She flinched just enough to give me an opening, though. I shot my leg out and kicked her in her midsection. She flopped backward, losing the wooden blade and slamming face first onto the deck with a solid thump. Her breathing was tense. A blind man could tell that she had overdone it. Her clothes were matted with sweat as she tried to get herself up to no avail. She coughed a little, but I quickly grabbed her arm and got her up. Much to my surprise, she didn't fight me.

"I think you need a break," I stated as we started slowly towards the cabin.

"J-Just a short one…" she mumbled, stumbling along.

If Mia did have one tragic flaw, it may very well have been how she overworked herself. I had heard her say something to someone sparring against her about how they were going easy on her because she was a girl. Perhaps, I thought, that was her motivation. She didn't want to be defined by the stereotypical role of her gender. She wanted to be better. She _had_ to be better.

Life on the ship… Life of a mercenary…

Life trying to overcome fate, even…

_Damn tough._

* * *

**LATE.**


	5. A Strange Land

**Groundhog Day Edit!**

**I fixed a flipping ton of grammatical errors in this chapter, mainly with the Jill conversation. I must have been really sleepy when I wrote that.**

* * *

_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 4 – A Strange Land_

* * *

It was just about the end of the first month…

I was bow training with Rolf, practicing a one-eighty snap-turn and shot. It wasn't a difficult maneuver so long as you knew the proper stance. It hadn't taken long for me to figure out that footwork was almost as importance to archery as arrows were. Depending on what your stance was, you had to turn a certain way. If you turned the wrong way, then your shot would be fouled by the positioning of your arms against your body. That fouled shot could be the difference between life and death.

Of course, that's not what I was thinking about at the time. I was just copying whatever Rolf was doing. He was a bright one, that kid, especially when it came to archery. Half of the stuff we were practicing was a cake walk for him. A body twist and shot? Bullseye. A roll and shot? Bullseye. A roundhouse kick, turn ninety and shot? Bullseye. I don't know if it was Shinon's prior training or just raw talent, but this kid was going to go far. I remembered my last playthrough of the game, during which I got Rolf all the way to a level twenty Sniper unit. He was downing dragon laguz in the last battle without any trouble.

It was crazy, though, seeing him as just a young boy. He was just a child, no matter how many people he had killed since Gallia. Thinking about him becoming a highly trained killer made my head spin.

We had been going at it for a short while that morning when I heard a bird screech.

"What's that?" I asked, looking up. I was alerted by it because it didn't sound like a seagull. Unfortunately, I hadn't been paying attention to where the call had come from.

"It sounded like a bird," Rolf stated the plainly obvious, clearly not knowing why I was so on edge about it.

I had been trying to anticipate the attack of the ravens for a few weeks by this point, almost to the point of seeming paranoid. It had been a hard battle in the game, so I could only assume that it was going to be worse in real life. This was why I had been taking rounds in the crow's nest, as I mentioned earlier. I didn't want to get divebombed by one of those giant birds before things even got started.

Of course, there was one critical detail that I had forgotten to remember about the ravens' attack, and it was about to kick me in the ass.

The sound of the ship running onto the shallow rock was a lot louder than I might have thought it would be. There was crunching and grinding, followed by thudding as everybody on deck took an involuntary dive.

"Agh! W-What was that?!"

"Blast! We've run aground!" Nasir yelled from the other side of the deck. I looked over to see him, Ike, Titania, and Soren getting back to their feet. They must have been having a meeting or something. "Move it, lads! Get the ship free!"

It was then that the bird calls started to radiate in. I isolated where they were coming from, and subsequently felt the need to flee. On the horizon to our rear was an intimidatingly large murder of crows… or ravens, rather, and they were coming in fast.

The thought crossed my mind to load my bow, so I did. I reached back and grasped an arrow, pulling it out and applying it to bowstring. As I aimed towards a bird, however, I noticed a very prominent flaw with this course of action. My arrow didn't have a metal tip. It was just a stick with a pointed end that would barely pierce a straw target, let alone the hide of a laguz. It was here that I remembered that Rolf had been nice and readied my quiver for me. I pulled the carrier off of my back and got a hand full of arrows to check them. Sure enough, every one was just a nonlethal practice arrow.

"Rolf, head down to the hold and get us some real arrows."

"But what about-?"

"Please!" I tried not to sound too demanding while also definitely sounding very panicked. "Go now! Move fast!"

For the record, I tended to speak really simply when I was in a fluster, which was precisely the way to describe me as I watched the crows descend on us. They were moving far too fast for us to do anything. Within seconds they had the boat surrounded and were flying circles around our vessel like it was a beached whale waiting to be devoured. Rolf had barely made it into the hold before the first raven swerved in and made a beeline for me. Not Ike. Not Soren. _Me._

I had no way to defend myself against it. The thing came down on me like the wind itself, and I only had a second to react. By some miracle, my body leaned itself to the side just enough to evade being skewered by a set of razor sharp talons. Instead, I just got my arm ripped into. They struck me like knives, except they had so much force and momentum behind them that I was thrown aside like a kicked ball. I can't even remember what hurt worse; the cuts on my arm or the impact of my back slamming onto the deck with most of my weight on top of it. I'd be feeling that one for the next week or so.

Thankfully, the monster didn't get a chance to follow up on its assault. Not a full two seconds after I was hit, green blades of magic wind swirled in and cut the thing into a mess of blood and feathers. The battle had begun.

I tried to get up as people started moving around and more crows started swooping, but my arm would have nothing of it. The deck was quickly descending into a hellish chaos, though, so I knew I had to move. In a shocking move, I actually started crawling, if you could actually call what I was doing crawling. I had painfully curled my injured arm in and… I guess the real word for it is '_scrambling_'. I was scrambling towards the door to the hold. Only one good arm with a bow clutched in hand was supporting me, but my legs were working just fine. I gritted my teeth at the pain. It was insane how badly it hurt. I couldn't bring myself to look at it, but my mind actually wasn't concerned with how bad it was. It was more focused on my escape. If I could just reach the door…

I was about five more seconds worth of movement away from the door when, with a grand slam, the way was flung open and out stormed pretty much every person who wasn't on deck already. I had to flop out of the way to avoid getting trampled, but that soon became the least of my problems.

I laid on my back, trying to focus on the footfalls shaking the deck rather than the pain, when a dark shape came into my vision. I fixated on it, only to realize that it was another raven. It was dive-bombing me. Seriously. It was coming straight down at me so fast that it was probably planning on impaling me on its face. It was just barely past the crow's nest when I noticed it, which meant that I probably only had a second to react. This time, with my injured arm making me fidget, there was no way I could get away.

Then, with a fierce yowl, my view changed in the blink of an eye. The raven was swept off its course as the shape of a giant amber cat jumped over me at just the point to intercept the bird. It was a masterful move by Lethe, and it saved my life. The instant I understood that I wasn't dead, I took in a massive gasp of air. Actually, I was about to reach up and pull down my mask when Mist suddenly appeared next to me.

"Mr. Arrow!" she said in an almost distraught voice as she held up her healing staff. I can't even begin to say how glad I was to see that staff. Without me even saying a word, she held it up to my arm and said some kind of ritual phrase.

The feeling presented by healing magic isn't much like you'd expect. There's not this pleasant feeling of happiness and wellbeing accompanied by sparkles and whatnot. You feel your torn skin and muscle being knit back together, and then there's just this kind of dull pain underlying numbness. The arm was still pretty useless for about ten seconds afterwards, mainly due to blood issues, but the battle was getting pretty well in hand by this point. By the time I had gotten everything to point of moving again, Rolf had come storming onto the deck with his eyes wide and his hands full of _real _arrows.

He wordlessly swapped the arrows in my quiver for me before running back below deck. I wanted to yell after him something about helping us to fight, but a nearby screech stole my attention. I loaded my bow and aimed, finding a raven trying to tear Brom's lance from his hands. It was an easy shot, which was great considering my arm's condition. I lined up with the thing's neck and fired, leaving nothing to be desired. The creature took the arrow, released Brom's lance, and started to flail around like a crazed black chicken. His lance back under his own control, Brom put an end to the thing with a swift thrust.

It was… _satisfying_ for some reason.

I looked around, watching several of the mercenaries and otherwise beating around the winged pirates. Soren was tossing magic left and right. Mordecai had his teeth around one raven's neck and his claws in another's back. None of the normally mounted units were astride their horses, flying or otherwise, but seemed to be doing fine all the same. Kieran, in fact, seemed to be doing very well. I watched in awe as he slung his body around, slamming the business end of his axe like a baseball bat into an incoming bird's head.

There was a loud screech not long after that, and, in a very odd moment, all of the ravens suddenly fell back. There were only about eight of them left, and they all came together into one big swarm and flew high above us. For an instant, I thought that they were going to retreat, but then they all pulled snap-dives and proceeded to pull a group bombing run. This wasn't going to end well if somebody didn't do something.

So, being the ranged weapon guy, I pulled my balls out of my purse, loaded my bow, and started taking shots. Their formation was pretty easy to aim at, considering that they were right above me going in a straight line. Do know that this was pure desperation, though. I had no illusions of actually making a hit, which turned out to be a good way to go about it. My arrow didn't connect with anything. Soren threw what I believe was an Elwind spell in there, and it took out one of the damn things, but that was all we had the time to do.

I braced myself to be either skewered or for someone I knew to be skewered, but then the strangest thing happened.

"_ROOOAR!_"

Apparently, I have an affinity for being rescued by roaring things.

Bear with me here, because I didn't get that good of a look at what went on. Just as the ravens were about halfway down the mast's length, a giant green _dragon_ came blasting through their formation. The lowest two birds in the formation were killed via wyvern's teeth and a spear through the torso, and the rest scattered when they realized that their formation was compromised.

As the wyvern crashed down onto the desk, a dead crow in its jaws and the magenta-clad Jill with a leg on each side of it, pretty much everybody present gaped. Then the rest of the crows counterattacked. Mordecai and Lethe bounded forward and took two more down, followed up by MVP Soren tossing another wind attack at one. Ike jumped out, too, swiping one of the damn things down with a broad stroke of his blade. I even found one raven keeping back from the rest of them, looking somewhat disoriented. It took to my arrow like a cow takes to being tipped, splashing down into the ocean for the sharks.

This just left one final foe, but I couldn't see where it had gone. It hadn't countered with its pals, so I thought for a moment that it might have gotten wise and fled. But no… That would have been too simple. The last screech was louder, more piercing than all of the ones before it. We all looked up, and there it was. One last raven, this one looking maybe slightly larger than the rest, was pulling one last dive-bomb. I don't know what it was about the dive-bomb maneuver that makes crows think it works. Maybe it's an older tactic for use against witless sailors. I can see that it would be ghastly effective if it actually connected, but none of them had so far.

Sure enough, Soren was on the ball. He held his hand up and wind blades materialized literally out of nowhere to shred the raven. The bird moved amazingly quick, however, and pulled some sort of spin that lead to him not being touched by any of the magic. My face fell at the sight, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might have to do something. My arms moved for my quiver, but I knew that it was going to be too late. Ike had his hand on his sword, ready to defend himself, but nobody seemed convinced. There were shouts, screams, and even one calling of the boy's name.

I'll admit it. I thought Ike was going to die…

…but then came a thrown spear.

I can't describe the noise very well. It was kind of a mix between the raven's screech and whatever you call the sound of tissue being punctured by sharp metal. The bird took the spear headlong and immediately went from trying to kill Ike to decorating the wall that separated the main deck from the quarterdeck like a macabre origami figure stuck by a giant pin.

We all stared at the sight for a few seconds before turning to where it had come from. There, still in the middle of the deck, was Jill. She stood on the back her wyvern, breathing hard and still in the stance of having thrown the spear. Her mount was hunched down, reminiscent of the black dragon under King Ashnard.

What happened next was pretty strange. I'd expected everyone to start interrogating poor Jill, but, instead, the majority of everyone started cleaning up the mess. I slowly scooted away from any touching of bird guts, instead moving towards the wyvern rider in question. Thankfully, Mordecai and Lethe both made tracks for the cabin, so Jill's being from Daein couldn't insult them straight off. She wasn't wearing the helmet like in the games, so I could get a good look at her face. She looked exactly like her in-game portrait. Her face was scowled, her eyes belying seriousness and caution as she looked around at everybody as they moved around.

When she saw me approaching she stepped down off her mount, which was currently distracted by all of the movement going on.

"Nice throw," I commented, deciding to be forward for once. Normally I would err on the side of subtly when it came to a new arrival, but Jill was a special case. She was a Daein soldier, as I saw while we were back in the port. She only joined in because we were fighting the crows. Otherwise, she'd have been our worst enemy out on the sea. We were all tired from that skirmish, and she still had a javelin hanging in a rack on her saddle.

"I don't need praise from you," she muttered at me hatefully, taking the route of hostility. I could deal with it, though. It wasn't like I had expected any better.

"Be nice," I advised in the friendliest tone I could work up at the moment, bringing up my bow and tapping her on the breastplate in pointed gesture. She slapped it away instantly, no doubt insulted.

"What's this?"

We both looked to the side to see Ike and Soren coming up. Ike was taking note of Jill, while the grumpy mage was glaring daggers at both of us. I flinched every-so-slightly at this, getting the unshakable feeling like I was in trouble or something.

"Just meeting the new arrival, Commander," I snapped into as polite a mode I could get going. To be honest, I was just doing this to avoid the fact that there were still pools of blood and feathers everywhere. I think I might have been in some sort of shock. I stuffed it down, though, too focused on the moment with Jill to be perturbed by something else.

"No doubt, and who is she?" the blue-haired swordsman turned his attention to Jill rather than waiting for me to answer.

"Jill Fizzart, wyvern rider of Daein, attached to Commander Haar's battalion. I offer a truce, and… um…" she started off as clean as claiming to be a Daein soldier could, but then began to falter. I think that was the first part of her lines from the game, but they were meant to be said in the heat of battle rather than after the battle when offering a truce to fight giant birds isn't so useful.

"We will accept no help from Daein!" Ike stated so matter-of-factly that I had to suppress a laugh. That was so quick and with such disdain that it was just funny for some reason.

"Th-This is no place for foolish pride!" Jill countered, obviously flustered and edgy. It was about here that I realized that she wasn't just here about fighting 'half-breeds' or whatever she called them. Getting a closer look at her, I could see that she appeared rather strung out. To the best of my knowledge, she was here against orders. Operating on her own like this, being so far out from any of her fellows; something told me that she was just desperate to not be alone anymore. She had probably planned on catching us in some vulnerable state, pull some crazy bullshit heroics, capturing the princess, and making off with our ship. That was one theory, at least. Who's to say why she really came to our aid.

Still, needless to say, if we forced her off, she would probably die out there.

"Ike!"

Before anything else could be said on the matter, Nasir came marching on deck and interrupted our little… whatever was about to happen.

"We've tried everything. There's no way we're getting off this reef without some sort of intervention," the dragon of a captain reported, officially causing many of the people who had been picking up bird corpses and tossing them overboard to look up and start whispering to each other in despair.

"Well…" Ike tried to say something, but his face only contorted into a look that suggested to me that there was a _very_ _large_ outburst of anger wanting to happen in there. Alas, however, Ike took a deep breath and turned to Soren.

"Handle this," he jerked his head towards Jill before walking off with Nasir. I looked down at the mage, trying to ignore how short he really was, in hopes that he might give me some sort of idea as where he wanted to go with the whole 'Jill's an enemy soldier thing'. Of course, I'd have no such luck. All he was doing was staring at Jill. I looked to her then, but she was just staring back at him. It was like they were locked in some asinine battle of wills, neither one wanting to concede.

"Throw her in the brig."

Soren's logical mouth spouted out the logical choice once their staring contest had run its course. Jill recoiled harshly at the news, but, sadly, I had to agree with the mage. Jill was an enemy soldier, and a passionate one at that. Why should we trust her enough to let her walk around freely? There was just one problem with this plan, however…

…and it had blood dripping from its teeth.

Upon registering that we weren't going to let her just do as she pleased, the wyvern rider did as wyvern riders do and mounted her damn wyvern. It was a swift, well-rehearsed movement. There was nothing I could have done in time to stop her without the likelihood of getting my arm chomped off coming to a head.

"What's going on here?"

I was actually happy to hear another voice. Turning around, I found a train of helping hands in the forms of Boyd, Oscar, Nephenee, and Brom coming to see what was going on. Almost instantly, praise my brain, a plan came to mind.

"She's a Daein soldier!" I declared to them, causing the expected reactions. They all pulled out a weapon and started to surround her. Much to my surprise, Titania even came up from wherever she had been and joined in on our intimidation technique. Just like that, Jill's expression had gone from that steely confidence to panicking. She only had her one lance, with the other two being stuck in bird bodies somewhere.

"How about you surrender?" I spoke up once it was clear that she couldn't get anywhere. Soren had his tome ready, so, even if she flew straight up, it was unlikely she could get away. "We're a charitable bunch, right Soren?"

"Shut up," the mage growled at me before looking back to Jill. Nothing more than I'd expected. "If you contain that beast and surrender peacefully, we'll consider your truce. How does that sound?"

The Daein noble girl looked put off for a moment—probably because Soren sounded about as sincere as someone blatantly pissing in your ear and telling you it's raining. But, much to my relief, diplomacy won the day. Jill sighed, patted her mount on the head to calm it down, and then slowly got down.

"Fine," she conceded after quickly collecting her nerves. "I'll cooperate."

"Glad to hear it," Soren nodded before trotting off to see where Ike went. Again, there was no honest trust in his voice. He was just fed up with the situation, I guess. I can only assume that he trusted the rest of us—probably Oscar and Boyd more than anyone else—to enforce the effect of the 'truce' more than he really trusted Jill. Something told me that Soren was more of the 'make it, but let someone else worry about doing it' kind of guy when it came to rules, strategies, politics, and the like. I mean, he always came up with strategies in the games, but you never saw him giving orders.

Anyway, Soren's running off just left me, Jill, and the mercs that had gathered around. I tried to think of something to say while Jill was shiftily looking about, but, thankfully, something else stormed in to take our collective attention.

"Ike! You can't go out there! It's…"

"If we can't get dislodged on our own, then we have no choice but to seek help by land."

We all looked over to find Ike and Nasir standing by where the life boat/dinghy was strung up. Our fearless commander appeared to be undoing the boat's ropes, at which I remembered that he was supposed to go on land and meet the Goldoan prince, Kurthnaga. It was all to end well, so I left it alone and watched as Nasir hopelessly tried to stop Ike from taking off. Naturally, the thick-headed mercenary got his way, and he, Mist, and Titania were soon on their way to the mainland. It wasn't very far away, but, unlike in the game, it wasn't close enough to just throw down the gangplank and walk across.

Things went smoothly. The sailors eventually mopped all of the blood off the deck, and a band of red dragons showed up after about an hour to lift us off the trappings. One thing to notice was how, in the game, it was only three dragons doing the lifting. In real life, we got about ten. They were big and all, but so was our ship, and it still had two months' worth of supplies weighing it down.

Once we were set down and waiting for Ike to return, I decided that it would be wise of me to lean against the side of the deck and watch Ike through the telescope. Why? Because I wanted to know what the prince of the dragons looked like. He was a younger character, appearing to be somewhere between Soren and Ike in age. Of course, I knew that he was actually very, _very_ old, which only made it more amazing that he looked to be about sixteen. Another thing I notice is how amazingly similar he is to Soren. Similar hair color, same eye color, even similar body figure. It's like they were drawn off the same base.

"See something interesting?"

I pulled myself away from the spyglass to find Nasir standing next to me. It was a bit of a surprise. I hadn't heard him approach at all.

"Just making sure that someone over there isn't roasting our poor commander and company to cinders," I offered, collapsing the scope. I didn't really feel like spying anymore.

"He's in good company, I believe," the captain smirked, though I could tell that there was worry somewhere inside his voice. He had probably been fully anticipating Ike getting blasted by some of the dragon soldiers. Had Kurthnaga not been there, he'd have probably been right.

"You're the one who's been taking shifts in the crow's nest, aren't you?" the conversation continued before I could think of a reply. Suddenly, I felt a bit of a cold sweat hit me. Nasir's voice was smooth, accented in a way I couldn't describe. The man had a kind of sly, perceptive grin about him as he stared me down. I knew he was a dragon laguz, meaning that he might very well have been anywhere between five to twenty times my age. Beneath him, I was just a stupid kid who really needed to go hide in the corner.

"Maybe," I tried to avoid looking him in the eye.

"No need to be so dubious," he spoke with the faintest hint of a wry laugh. "I'm going to have to ask you to stop, though. My men are lazy enough without somebody else doing their chores for them."

_Yeah, because they're totally not asleep every time I go up there or anything…_

"You have my sincerest apologies," I said what I felt was called for, even if it was somewhat sarcastic. Sarcasm, unfortunately, was a force of habit when I was in a bad mood. Between being wounded, witnessing several gruesome deaths of giant birds, watching Ike almost get shredded, and dealing with Jill and her beastie, I was plum pixelated and would be for the next several hours, if not days.

I went back to my leaning, and Nasir joined me without speaking again. I could see Ike and Kurthnaga exchanging some courteous bows as Titania prepared the boat. Gareth stepped forward at one point, possibly volunteering to carry the small boat over, but Ike shook his head. They returned shortly after, with the dragons disappearing into the obscurity of my vision.

I didn't notice it at the time, but '_the obscurity of my vision_' wasn't quite what it used to be. I was seeing farther than I ever had been able to see before, but I had never put any real effort into it back before arriving in Tellius that the fact breezed straight over my head.

How funny… It might have helped in the long run if I'd noticed.

* * *

**I was going to expand on the conversation with Nasir, but it seemed pointless. This chapter's dragged on for long enough!**

**Sorry if you find the action a little sub-par. The way I imagine the ravens fighting isn't easy to describe. Talons and beaks aren't my weapons of choice, if you know what I mean.**

…**Actually that sounds like an innuendo. CRUD!**

**/rambling**


	6. What Should Never Be

**Holy crap! I updated!**

**Also, a quick note, I made a metric crap-ton of grammatical corrections in the last chapter. You might want to go check that if you bailed because of the errors.**

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_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 5 – What Is and What Should Never Be_

* * *

The second month of my time at sea was pretty much like the second half of the first month, sans the battle.

That didn't make it any easier, though. Keeping with my training regimen, eating poorly, smelling badly, dealing with all of the shit that came with living on a ship, living in a confined space with several other people, and, worst of all, everyone else was just as cranky as I was; it was a true test of my mental faculties. The only real comfort, looking back on it, was that I managed to forget all about that mark on my hand.

My performance in the battle against the crows earned me some respect amongst the mercenaries. Brom, in particular, became rather good friends with me in return for helping him fight off that one bird. Unfortunately, friendship with one person leads to friendship with several others, which, in turn, leads to becoming comfortable. Being comfortable then leads to something that I really didn't need.

_Latency_.

Suddenly, days started to come where I'd start spending half the damn day sitting on the deck smoking a pipe with big farmer Brom and his good pal Zihark. In order to—for lack of a better phrase—_commemorate our friendship_, the big fellow gave me a little one he'd made from a corncob. I felt a little inferior at first. Brom and Zihark both had these fine looking pipes, not unlike something you might see the hobbits carrying in the Lord of the Rings movies. Still, after about a week of it, I became less interested in what I was doing and more interested in what I was thinking about.

The time on the ship, to be perfectly honest, dragged. If I wasn't training or exercising, I wasn't really doing anything. When we smoked, talking wasn't quite on the agenda. It was a time to retrospection, maybe even introspection. Brom would get out this pouch and open it up and stare at it longingly. I remembered that from the game. It was a good luck charm from his family.

Brom… well… He was a good guy. Probably the nicest guy on the ship, when you really compared him to the rest of our motley crew. He was kind, simple, and didn't care if you were shady. He told me that I reminded him of his son, so I took that as a sign to keep close to him. I thought that maybe he could teach me a thing or two about… I don't know. _Anything_. Aside from that, though, he was an easy fellow to read. I never had to guess what Brom was thinking about something because he would either say it or wear it plainly on his face.

Zihark, as our earlier encounters had informed me, was also a simple kind of guy, though not nearly in the way Brom was. Zihark was simple in the way that he acted. He didn't try to be mysterious—he simply was. What he didn't do, however, was let that mysteriousness define him. Like Brom, he was kind and easy-going. Sure, he trained, but his schedule was much less intensive than that of the Greil Mercenaries. And yet he still managed to outspar Ike on occasion. It almost made me want to see what he could do against Mia, but Mia tended to spar earlier in the day than Zihark. If there hadn't been breakfast yet, Zihark wasn't training. Didn't want to cramp up, or some malarkey…

Sitting with Brom and Zihark was a defining part of the routine I developed during my time on the ship. We became a staple on the deck. After our afternoon training sessions, we'd would take off anything heavy, sit down, and just let the day's sweat, worry, and tears just work themselves out. Sometimes we'd talk a little, but sometimes we sat in silence. Sometimes somebody else would join us, and then a conversation would brew up for a couple of hours. It'd usually be Brom telling some funny story about something or other on the farm, by the end of which he'd be crying and we'd have to console him and say that we were fighting for them too.

Honestly, though, as far as I knew, I really was fighting for Brom's family. In the months of being adrift with nothing to see but water, horizon, and the occasional distant strip of land, the war-torn image of that village back in Crimea seemed to get farther and farther away. Every day I didn't have to go into battle, I risked forgetting what this band of metal-slinging nutcases was out to do—and it was a lot of days, mind you. We were going to have to take down King Ashnard, but that seemed so far off. Some days I wouldn't even know why I was working so hard.

Then I'd see Brom crying, or perhaps it'd be Rolf trying so hard to emulate a difficult shot that Shinon had shown him. Then I'd think about what needed to be done.

It made my scalp itch.

A lot of my time sitting and smoking in silence was spent thinking about how far I'd be able to go. Sometimes I'd have bad thoughts or even dreams about getting killed fighting this war that shouldn't even exist. Did I have I choice, though? I wondered that a lot… and it took me a long time to find an answer.

Anyway, you came for a tale, not a bunch of internal hoo-ha. Let me tell you about some things that really got my gears turning during those months.

It was, oh… middle of the second month, I guess. We were still making a long arc away from Phoenicis and Kilvas—the logic behind which was that we were out farther than the birds would dare go—when, all of the sudden, clouds started to roll in. Not to suggest that clouds were rare during our voyage, but these clouds weren't your everyday flying puff of cotton. These were cumulous clouds, taller than the tallest buildings and wider than cities.

I was sitting on the deck, watching the sun set and waiting for supper. Brom had dragged out a bit of weed for us to burn, so we were just sitting there, minding our own business. Then, just as things started to get dark, Nasir came running out on deck.

That's when all of that latency that had set in got a serious kick in the balls.

"_You idiots!_" the pointy-eared man yelled, catching everyone's attention. "_We're sailing straight into a STORM!_"

What do you think of when I say 'an explosion of people'? Well, imagine there to be about eight sailors on deck—me, Brom, and Zihark not counting. Now imagine every single one of those men bouncing up from their spots like popcorn and turning to face the forward end of the ship. They all turn white as sheets and, with all of the subtlety of stampeding wildebeests, start dashing around and calling out things that the average man can't even pronounce. That's what I mean, and that's exactly what happened.

As all hell started to break loose, I decided to stand up and take a peek at what was causing such a ruckus. I had never seen a storm at sea in real life, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. It couldn't be that bad, right?

Wrong. _Dead wrong_.

Walking up onto the bow, which was raised from where I'd been sitting, I came to witness the largest, evilest looking thunderhead I've ever seen. It was massive, swirling and spewing out rain and lightning. The sea was churning beneath us all of the sudden, and I could feel the wind kicking my hair. Above all, though, I had to give the sailors credit. Admittedly, none of them had been standing on the bow, and the ones on the stern had been asleep, but still. To miss the swarm of Hell coming at straight at us must have taken true talent at being ignorant.

…I say before admitting that I totally didn't see it either.

"Oh… uh… huh…" I choke back on a curse that wouldn't sit well with my surroundings.

"Holy horse manure!" was Brom's reaction as he and Zihark quickly joined me.

"We should get inside," Zihark advised, and he didn't have to tell us twice. We snuffed our pipes and retreated below deck just as Ike, Soren, and Titania were coming out to see what the fuss was.

"What's going on?" one of them asked.

"Storm," I replied before brushing by with all the intent I could bring about.

Not a full twenty minutes later, as the majority of us huddled in our bunks, the boat started to rock and quake as waves slammed into it. The beds were nailed down—sailing ingenuity—so we used them to keep our asses from sliding around like curling stones. Of course, that didn't stop several of the girls from coming and taking up company with us men folk. Nephenee, Mia, and Marcia all managed to stumble into our dorm at some point, mumbling something about a crazy cat.

For the record, Mordecai was nowhere to be found at this point.

"You don't think that… ugh…" Boyd uttered as we rocked and tried not to roll. "You don't think we'll sink, do ya?"

At this seemingly harmless question, Marcia promptly made a shrill noise and started to squirm. I guess people who fly have an aversion to storms, what with the high winds and whatnot. Although, I have to admit, I wouldn't have minded Marcia's trembling so much if she hadn't decided that she wanted to sit on my bunk and _crunch my forearm into oblivion_ out of nerves.

…Not that I could have denied her, of course. The dame had one of those smiles, y'know. Not the seductive kind, but just the really damn nice kind. The kind that, if you actually said no to it, there'd be a bad taste in your mouth and everyone around you would judge you negatively for it.

So yeah… Marcia. Thankfully, the storm had everyone else preoccupied and no ideas were spread.

"Don't say things like that," Oscar nudged his brother as the boat continued to do its shaking and rocking. "I'm sure that Nasir and the sailors have everything under control."

Unfortunately, I was leaning more towards Boyd's thoughts than Oscar's. By this point in the trip, I was inclined to put my life in the care of a cantaloupe before trusting Nasir's inept crew. Sure, they knew the basics, but where were they when the ravens attacked? Hiding. What did they do when we were stuck on that reef? Nothing—that I saw, at least. What were they doing when Nasir wasn't up on deck yelling at them? Sleeping and drinking like frat boys.

At least a cantaloupe could save me from hunger and scurvy. If I was starving and asked one of those sailors for food, he'd probably have brought me a bucket of sea water.

"I'm worried about the commander."

Everyone looked over to Zihark, whom had been sitting quietly on his bunk until this point. The beds were lined in two rows along the length of the room's walls, with Zihark's bed being directly across from mine. I remember how serious he looked, and I couldn't blame him. He had a point. Ike had gone out as we were coming in, and there was no sign of him ever coming back through.

Then, without another word spoken, he stood up and started walking for the door.

"Z-Zihark!" Brom spoke up, causing the swordsman to turn. We could all see his face and how determined he was. It spoke volumes for the mysterious man's true character. Brom lost any word he might have been about to speak, and so he just stood. They both walked out, leaving everyone else in a stunned and probably confused silence.

Then it hit me. A feeling of dread and worry knotted right into the pit of my gut. I was worried about them. Those two men—my best friends on the ship, I figured—were going out there to risk their lives and make sure everything was okay. I watched them leave, and the worry swirled around inside of me like the storm outside. I became numb, it seemed. Everything else in the room didn't matter. Even Marcia's titanic grip on my arm was just static.

But I didn't get up. I just sat there, worrying and waiting.

I was a damn coward.

After God knows how long, they came back with their heads bowed. Everybody watched as they started to take off their soaked outermost layer of clothes—nobody minded due to the fact that it was rather cool inside the ship; pneumonia was the last thing we needed to be dealing with. Soren was with them. He was about as pale as a person can get without being declared legally dead, looking more tired than I'd ever seen him. He collapsed on his bed next to Rhys, and that was all I saw of him for that week.

"How was it?" Boyd asked hopefully as the two men sat down.

"Two of the sailors went overboard," Zihark spoke, taking a moment to collect his wits as the color silently drained from everyone's faces. "But the commander and Titania are okay. They told us to come back down. The captain didn't want any more clients on deck."

As his words fell about the room, sounding rather spiritless as they went, I turned to see Brom. The man was just looking at the floor, his usually jolly face taken by obvious gloom.

This affected me. My heart sank, and I was reduced to just glowering into space. My eyes clenched shut, as they usually did when I was having a mental dilemma, and my free hand was doing its best to massage my furrowed brow. My mind was addled by what had just transpired in front of me. I felt like I had let Brom and Zihark down by staying behind. It wasn't like they had asked me to go with them. Heck, they hadn't even passed a glance at me going out or coming in. Still, that was all I could think about. What would have happened if I had gone out there with them? Could I have averted those sailors' deaths? Could I have spared my friends from witnessing something so terrible? Could I have been swept away as well, left behind to drown in the cold sea?

As the storm subsided and everyone finally faded into a tentative sleep, I remained awake. It was a night of bad feelings and staring at the ceiling.

The week after the storm was notable for the gloomy feel that was cast over the ship. People suddenly weren't cheerful anymore. The news of the sailors' deaths had brought the bored feelings that had been dominating the trip and turned them into silent fury. I heard Boyd talking about it one evening after dinner.

"We've fought so many battles since this thing started," he said to Ike as they stayed sitting while most people had left. "To lose people to something as stupid as a storm just seems…"

He pounded his fists against the tabletop.

"Too many people have died because of this war," was all Ike said in return.

Training became a lot more focused after that, too. I guess it was the sudden end to that latency. If it had been building in me, then it'd make sense for everyone else to have it as well. I started putting more effort into perfecting shots with Rolf. I finally buckled down and asked him for help when I was struggling. I started imitating his form when I could. I also started getting more involved with the training of others. I started sparring with others using a pole, which I eventually learned was supposed to be a quarterstaff. To be honest, I wasn't much of a fighter with it.

My roll when sparring with anyone other than Mia—because she wouldn't accept me not fighting back—was best described by the word 'target'. By the middle of that second month, we'd already whacked all of the targets and dummies that'd been cobbled together before the trip to shreds. Mine and Rolf's arrow targets were starting to look more like sponges. This led to sparring becoming more popular. We even held a tournament one day. Titania won, beating out Zihark in the final match and nearly tossing him off the ship in the process. The poor guy could barely lift his sword afterwards. Rhys, the best healer we had, spent the next two hours with him, if that puts things into perspective for you.

Me? I didn't participate. Competitions aren't something I do well in.

Days kept on rolling. Once the tournament lightened things up, things began to finally feel routine again. I would get up, train, eat, enjoy what I could, and do my best not to think about anything other than the present.

…What? You want more? Fine.

One day, for reasons I'll explain in a moment, I was taking a walk through the deepest innards of the ship. The lower holds were cool for two reasons; one, because nobody ever came down to bother me, and two, I could just hop in an empty barrel when somebody actually did come down. No wonder Mist was never able to find Volke. There were so many empty casks that a skilled craftsman could have built a house down there out of them.

Anyway, the reason I was down there was because Mist, of all people, was trying to find me. She'd been doing her best to keep talking to me for some reason. I don't know what she saw in me or whatever, but _damn_ if that girl wasn't adamant about being my friend. As I said before, it wasn't that I minded her company or anything. It was Titania. That woman simply refused to trust me around the only girl she had in her flock. When she'd caught me and Mist hanging out the day before, she'd waited until Mist was gone and proceeded to drag me to the side and give me one of those talks. You know what I'm talking about. It was the kind of talk that a doting father might give a sleazy boyfriend, which was made freaky by the fact that she most certainly was not Mist's father, nor was I her boyfriend. Had it actually been the girl's father, Greil… well… I'm sure I'd have shit my pants and taken up new residence in the lifeboat.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Titania was going to castrate me if she ever caught me with Mist again. Hence what I was taking a walk through the deepest innards of the ship.

"Mr. Arrow?"

_Balls_.

I felt a small wave of panic hit me as Mist's voice radiated from the wooden corridor I'd just turned out of. Thankfully, there was a good array of empty barrels sitting in the hall for me to partake in. I picked the lid off of the closest one, jumped in, and covered my already masked face to further avoid being heard. The sound of her moving around outside was amazingly nerve-wracking, which was strange considering that meeting Mist down in the hold wasn't hazardous to my health unless Titania was following her around. Still, I wasn't quite sure how I was going to break it to the girl just yet how her surrogate mother hates my guts.

She called my name a few times, and I heard her move somethings around. Maybe she thought I was hiding behind something? I'm not sure. But then, just when I thought she might give up and head back upstairs, I heard the telltale sound of barrel lids being lifted. She was working her way down the line, and I was bound to be caught unless divine intervention came into play. I struggled with the thought of just coming clean and explaining myself, but ultimately couldn't manage it. All I could do was sit in the damp darkness and resign myself to inevitable disappointment.

"Mist!"

I said a silent thanks to whatever deity would take me when Rolf's voice called into hold.

"What?"

"Ike's looking for you!"

"O-Okay! I'm coming!"

My heart began to return to its regular beats-per-minute as I heard the taps of Mist's boots retreating towards the door. Within seconds, the door was shut and I was able to come up for air. The lid of the barrel bounced off my head as I shot up, but I managed to catch it out of the air. I sighed as things became quiet again, remarking to myself how ridiculous that had been.

"What was that all about?"

Cue me flinching so hard that I almost dropped the lid. I twisted around in shock, finding a young man with green hair and a perturbed look on his face staring at me like I was some weirdo hiding from girls in a barrel.

"Uh…" I faltered, looking at the boy, Sothe, and being absolutely uncertain as to what I should say. He was standing in a barrel, much like I was. This gave me an opportunity to turn the conversation around. "What are you doing down here?"

"I asked you first!" he countered with infallible logic.

"I… I asked you second!" I counter-countered with infallible idiocy.

"Shut up!" a third and unexpected voice double-countered.

Needless to say, Sothe and I both jumped out of our barrels in fright. He drew out his knife, and I readied myself for anything. I felt like a cornered beast, what with everything hunting me and surprising me. I had come down into the hold for peace and quiet, not to hide in barrels and get jumped by people with silly-colored hair!

Anyway, out from another barrel sprung none other than Jill, our resident Daein wyvern rider and the least trusted person on the ship. She looked downright furious as she dusted her sleeves off and shook various particulates from her hair. I was about ready to give up by this point.

"If you two are going to argue and shout like idiots, do it somewhere else!" she fumed at us.

"What the hell are _you_ doing down here?" I raged in question, realizing just then that this was the first time I'd seen her in days.

"I live down here," she growled as what might be her pretty features became muddled by a melancholy expression. "The other women don't trust me, so I stay down here to avoid their stares."

"So you're the one who was sleeping in my good barrel!" Sothe suddenly blurts out, bringing my fractured attention span to him.

"Oh, bug off! Your name wasn't on it," Jill kept on, at which I promptly turned around and put a heavy foot towards the exit with every intention of finding Brom and smoking nonstop for the next five hours.

So, yeah… Like I said, the second month of my time at sea was pretty much like the second half of the first month, sans the battle.

…

Actually, now that I think about it, they were pretty different. How about that?

* * *

**Hey everybody! Sorry for the long wait! Like I said, though, I haven't been focusing on this. That's part of why this chapter is a little... meh. The next chapter will contain the next battle, though, so I guess I'll have more incentive to write than this one.**

**Anyway, thanks for reading! Leave a review if you feel like it! Tips and comments are always appreciated!**


	7. A Guiding Wind

**I don't know who wrote the scenario for this chapter of the game, but they need to be shot in the foot with a nail gun.**

**Some spoilers for **_**Radiant Dawn**_** ahead. If you haven't played that game, brace yourself.**

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_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 6 – A Guiding Wind_

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By the time the middle of the third month had rolled around, I was almost ready to hurl myself into the ocean.

Time seemed to stand still some days. We would go days without seeing any trace of land, relying on the skill of Nasir and his navigators to keep us on the right track. The food was starting to have no taste, the ale was starting to taste like bile, and training for longer than an hour a day was getting harder and harder to pull off. Even Mia and Kieran, once our two paragons of good fitness and enthusiastic training, were starting to become weary of it. There were several days where they were the only ones doing anything other than eating and sleeping.

Hell, there were more than a few days were most of us were actively avoiding doing anything at all. It eventually became a matter of us making a small fort out of the empty barrels in the hold and hiding behind it from Titania. Then Boyd would organize a card game, and we'd play for small amounts of coin and trinkets. Sothe even started to whittle out wooden pieces for those who didn't have anything to bet with. We had a good time, surprisingly. No more than six could play a round due to the fort's size, so we'd all revolve in and out every couple of games. Shockingly, Titania never found us. At night, we'd run bigger games up in the mess hall. Volke even came up to play every once in a while. It was a high mark for the trip, of that you can be sure.

But still, that's not important. Even if the card games were the only thing keeping me from sealing myself in a barrel and slitting my wrists, it wasn't until the last couple of days when what I was really waiting for finally happened.

It was just after noon one day. I was sitting next to Brom on the deck, chewing on the end of the corncob pipe he'd given me, when the loud flapping of wings became apparent over the waves. Remembering the last time things with large wings had come around, we both jumped up to see what was the matter. It took me a moment to spot the white steed coming out of the clouds, but the woman in black armor astride it was unmistakable. It was Tanith, deputy commander of the Begnion holy guard.

The next chapter had begun.

"Hail!" the woman called down with a commanding tone that rivaled Titania's. This caused several of the sailors, most of which had been watching the woman's descent with varying levels of shock and awe, to spring into action and clear a good space on the deck of her to land. Her pegasus gave one last thrust of its majestic white wings before finally clopping down and coming to a rest at the ship's bow.

As stares were exchanged between holy guardswoman and the dumbstruck sailors, Brom patted me on the shoulder and stood up. I joined him, and we both made our way over to see what was about to happen.

"Is the princess of Crimea among you?" Tanith asked in a less than polite voice. I couldn't help but notice how her hand was rested on the hilt of her sheathed sword. No doubt she was ready to cut one of us to ribbons the instant somebody made a snide remark.

The sailors didn't know what to think, so we went ahead and stepped forward.

"For the sake of clarity, may we inquire as to who's asking?" I spoke up, cracking open my mental dictionary so as not to seem as ape-like as the still uncertain seamen. I may have come off as less than polite myself, but I can't say that I thought much of Tanith. The way she held her chin up and looked down on us gave me a bad impression.

"I am an envoy from Her Imperial Majesty, the Apostle of Begnion," the woman stated from behind her glare, which was pointed directly at me. Her eyes were, to be cliché, as cold as ice, not that I had been expecting any better. Tanith always struck me as a taciturn and severe person when I saw her in the games.

"Is that so?" came another voice as the door to the ship's interior slammed shut. We all turned to find Nasir striding up with a displeased look on his face. As he arrived on the scene, most of the sailors proceeded to move behind him in some sort of trembling maneuver. Brom and I took our own steps back as well, though I made sure to keep within earshot. This was something I wanted to witness.

"I suppose you can provide proof of such a position, then," our fearless captain said with sternness that I thought countered Tanith perfectly. She was a force to be reckoned with, but Nasir was definitely an immovable object.

"Of course," Tanith didn't flinch. She reached calmly into a bag at her side and removed a rolled up piece of paper. It was wrapped with an ornate red ribbon, the centerpiece of which was a golden emblem. "This is a formal letter of greeting from the apostle. Surely you recognize that it is bound by the symbol of House Altina."

For the record, Altina is the legendary heroine whose bloodline the apostle carries. The legend is that she could hear the voice of the goddess, Ashera, or something to that effect, and so can her descendants. However, I knew from playing the games that the current apostle, Sanaki, was actually false. While she was of the correct bloodline, she wasn't the eldest daughter. That role belonged someone else, but I suggest you ignore that for now. That's what you might call an S-ranked secret.

Anyway, Nasir got respectfully close to get a good look at the emblem before nodding weakly.

"Yes, that is indeed the correct seal," he agreed before backing away and giving the knight a good look over. I can only assume that he was judging her to see whether or not she really was with the holy guard. Seeing as the man was old enough to have likely seen several examples during his life, I trusted him to make the right call.

"Very well. Wait here," the dragon man decided after a moment. Tanith nodded, taking this opportunity to dismount her ride. Before leaving, though, Nasir ducked down and whispered in my ear. "Watch her."

"Will do," I muttered before he turned away.

"What're you all doing here? Get back to work!" he yelled as he marched through the crowd of sailors, which broke around him like he was a similarly charged magnet. With a swing of Nasir's hand in the air, the men all scattered back to their chores. This just left Tanith, Brom, and me standing around with nothing to do but wait for Elincia to come out.

…What? Zihark? He was playing cards down in the hold.

I did as Nasir requested and kept my eyes on the woman. She was stroking her pegasus's mane, not paying me or the idle Brom any attention. When she finally turned around, she seemed a little surprised to see us still there. I can't deny that we probably looked pretty weird to her. I was a scrawny eighteen-year-old with a mask under his chin and an empty pipe grinding between his teeth. Brom was a big-boned forty-something-year-old with a funny nose and smoke coming out of almost every orifice. I passed a quick glance over at the big guy to see what he was doing, finding him blowing smoke out his nose with a frown on his face. I couldn't tell if he was annoyed, bored, or just hungry, but it sufficed to say that he wasn't getting any good vibes from Tanith either.

"I don't suppose you two are soldiers," she asked us while we stood. I was a little surprised. She hardly seemed the type for small talk.

"Not a soldier's bone in me," I replied without much thought before looking to my cohort.

Brom pulled his pipe out of his mouth and let out some smoke for the wind to disperse. "I'm just a farmer. Wouldn't make much of a soldier."

Tanith was not amused. Not to suggest that we were trying to be funny, but she certainly looked less than pleased by our answers. It was like she was pissed because she was having to associate with us riff-raff. I even expected her to say something derogatory towards us, but her mouth stayed shut until Nasir finally returned with the princess and half the merc group in tow.

"Princess Elincia of Crimea, I presume," Tanith greeted the good lass of green hair and orange dress in a much more respectful tone than she had been using before. I turned my head at this point, not wanting anyone to see the look on my face when I saw how Elincia managed to look radiant in spite of having lived on a mucky ship for the last three months.

"Yes," Elincia acknowledged, her voice soft and clear. It was unmistakable compared to the rest of the group. All of the female mercenaries had more ridged or candid tones. The princess's voice was simply angelic in comparison.

…It's amazing what you can say about a person's voice from just one word, isn't it?

"'Tis an honor to meet you. My name is Tanith, deputy commander of Begnion's holy guard," the woman actually introduced herself, stating her title just as I remembered it.

"I must ask, what would Begnion want of me that she would send her holy guard to greet me?"

"The apostle has learned of you, Princess Elincia," Tanith spoke clearly, getting down to business and once again drawing out the apostle's letter. "This is a formal letter of greeting from the Her Majesty. It should contain the details."

Elincia took a moment to read it, during which I couldn't help but notice that her already pale white face seemed to get even more so.

"The apostle wishes to meet with me?" she asked once she had regained her composure, such that it was. She sounded bewildered, as if this was the last thing she had been expecting. It seemed pretty obvious to me, though. Why else would the most powerful person in the known world send an envoy to greet us _out in the middle of the damn ocean_?

"If you agree, then I shall ask you to come with me. The apostle is waiting," Tanith explained, noticing Elincia's confusion. "Will you accept?"

"I suppose that I…" Elincia started to say, but seemed to fall into indecision. She looked to Ike, whom stepped forward.

"We're with you whatever you decide, Princess."

"Your escort is most welcome to join you, of course," Tanith mentioned on Ike's cue, though she did make note to bat a swift and distasteful eye towards me once again. By this time, I'd dropped my empty pipe from my mouth, stashed it in my pocket, and pulled my mask back up.

"Then yes, I accept the apostle's invitation," Elincia finally decided for us.

And, on that note, the plot twisted.

"Commander Tanith!"

We all looked up to find another pegasus flying in from the same direction Tanith had come from. Astride it was a young woman, probably no older than Mist, wearing minimal armor and carrying nothing but a bag and the slimmest of swords. A messenger, no doubt, made for speed rather than combat.

"What is it, private?"

"We've sighted birdmen near the apostle's position. Crows—pirates!"

The girl's almost breathless claims caused a chorus of whispers to fire up among those on deck. Tanith, however, failed to get excited.

"What of it? Commander Sigrun is with Her Majesty, and it will take more than a few winged scavengers to take her down."

"Well… That's just it, ma'am. Commander Sigrun isn't quite sure where the apostle is at the moment."

Cue Tanith _almost _losing her shit. I'm serious. For about a quarter of a second, the look on her face could be perfectly captioned with 'OH FUCK!'

After that, she turned away from us all and hauled the messenger back a short distance so that they could whisper about sensitive matters without the princess hearing it. I found it quite amusing, actually. Seeing Tanith go from snooty and fake-polite to a nervous wreck in the blink of an eye was just what I needed to brighten my day.

After a few more moments, Elincia finally approached the two pegasus riders. "Excuse me, but is something wrong?"

"Your Highness, I must apologize, but an urgent matter has arisen, and I must attend to it immediately," Tanith spoke quickly as she remounted her winged horse and the messenger did the same. "I will return for you. Await me until then!"

With that, both riders kicked off and took to the air. I watched with interest as they rose high into the sky and started making metaphorical tracks, wondering to myself how exactly it was possible, even with those giant wings, for a horse to fly. I mean, c'mon. Horses weigh a fucking ton, don't they? Explain to me then how one can fly? Talk about horsepower! I remember hearing a story about a guy who hit a horse with his car. Killed them both on impact and smashed the car to smithereens.

…Ahem! Anyway, as I watched the two get farther away, the mercs proceeded to start talking amongst themselves behind me. I wasn't inclined to join them, so I just continued to watch Tanith become a smaller and smaller silhouette against the horizon.

Then, as her frame started to get lower in the sky, I noticed something out on the water in the same direction they were flying. It was two ships, one pulled alongside the other, and there were several shapes buzzing around them like flies. I was shocked at first, not because of what it was, but because I could actually see the shapes clearly. It had to be at least a couple of miles away, but I could make out the images and movements as if they were being shown to me with the zoom feature on some fancy HD camera—sans pixilation.

Just then, I remembered what was supposed to be going on. I wanted to smack myself for not thinking about it sooner, but didn't for the sake of discretion.

"You reckon they're heading for those ships on the horizon?" I asked loudly, stretching my arm out into a firm point at where the sight was located. Thankfully, I was noticed, and Ike and Nasir were at the side of the ship trying to get a better view before you could say 'orange'.

"One ship's got Begnion flags," Nasir observed as he looked at scene with his personal telescope—a proper accessory for any decent ship captain. "The other's blank. I don't see any marks, so they must be pirates allied with the ravens. They're attacking the Begnion ship."

"Ike, why don't we go lend them a hand?" Soren—yes, _that_ Soren—suggested, causing every single person on deck to look at him as if he'd grown a second head.

"Are… uh… Are you feeling alright, Soren?" Ike asked warily, still apparently reeling from the shock of the most cynical and unkind person present at the moment suggesting that we go help somebody out of the goodness of our hearts. Personally, I was thinking along the exact same lines as the kid. I'd actually forgotten that he was going to suggest helping, so it was a pleasant surprise when he spoke up.

"It's a good opportunity to put the empress in our debt," the mage comes back with his ulterior motive. "We'd be fools to pass that up, wouldn't we?"

"I should have known you'd have an angle," Ike half-sighed, shaking his head before looking up. "What do you want to do, Titania?"

"I don't approve of Soren's motivations, but I agree that we should help."

"Then that's what we'll do," Ike nodded, looking next to Nasir. "Captain, is that alright with you?"

"You're the client," Nasir gave a content grin of acknowledgement before turning around to his men and proceeding to bark orders.

"We'll keep a reserve back to keep the princess safe while the advance team moves across the Begnion ship and provides assistance," Ike continues on, holding onto the side as the ship begins to turn in the direction we need to go. "Assuming the princess has no objections, that is."

As Elincia started talking and I stopped caring, I turned to Rolf, whom had come up next to me and Brom at some point during the conversation.

"Say, Rolf, what does he mean by 'advance team'?"

"It's a term we came up with after we started having to leave people back to protect the princess," he said as we evened out and the sails were adjusted to the wind. "The advance team moves forward, while the rest stay back and hold the rear."

That was what I'd been expecting. Just like in the game, the whole crew was too big to be rushing already crowded ship decks, so Ike was going to take only a chunk of us forward and leave the rest behind to be the opposite of useful. There was one more question, though.

"How do you know if you're on the advance team?" I frowned, already dreading what I was about to hear.

"Well…" Rolf paused for a moment, as if thinking about it. "I know I'm on it."

"And who told you that you were on it?" I tried a little harder.

"Ike told me," he gave me what I wanted.

After a few more moments of chatter, we all headed down into the ship to get ourselves armored up and ready to kill some 'pirate' scum. I won't lie and say I wasn't nervous, but I managed to keep my feelings inside. These people didn't need a runt like me dragging them down. To be honest, I wasn't disappointed by the prospect of being left out of the real battle. I wasn't ready yet. Shooting at a stationary target or a guy running straight at you down a street is different than shooting at enemies mixed in with friendlies on the deck of ship. There's a massive difficulty spike there, and I wasn't ready to test my capabilities in those regards just yet.

Still, it was all combatant hands on deck when we pulled alongside the Begnion cruiser. Ike quickly tagged everyone he needed for the advance team as Oscar and Boyd threw down some planks to get across with. I was, as planned, left out. When the call to move came, I stayed behind with a few others to keep our ship out of pirate hands. Looking around, I found Brom, Sothe, Marcia, and Mordecai were joining me. I also noticed that Jill and Volke were not present, either with me or with Ike. The princess was down in the hold with Nasir and presumably our missing teammates as well.

And so the battle raged.

I watched with my teeth digging into my lip as Ike ran up to a red-armored Begnion soldier and got the axeman he was fighting off of him. Somebody shouted something about reinforcements, and thus the rest of the mercenaries came running in and promptly began to clear the ship of hostiles. A few ravens swooped in, one of them nearly taking off Nephenee's head, but Rolf and Soren made impressively quick work of them. Tanith and her platoon of pegasus knights were taking out the bulk of the horde, thankfully, so we were able to focus primarily on the 'pirates'.

For the record, the reason I'm stressing the word 'pirates' is because they weren't actually pirates. They were Daein soldiers in disguise. I'm not sure if that fact was ever actually discovered in the game, so I made sure not to mention anything of it as I stood there and watched the battle.

In spite of my thoughts on whether or not I was ready to fight in this battle, I have to admit that I felt rather helpless and worrisome as I watched the people I'd spent the last three months with risking their lives in battle. There were a few points were I was tempted to get out an arrow and take a shot, but a little bit of wisdom in the back of my head would remind me that I was probably just as likely to hit one of our side as I was one of theirs.

"Are you alright?" someone spoke to me as things went on. I looked to Marcia, who was standing at my left, and found her looking at me with concern. "You've got blood running down your chin."

My fingers brushed over the area in question, obtaining a fresh coat of blood as Marcia had implied. I didn't even need to think about it realize that, like a dope, I'd punctured my lip with my sharper-than-hell incisors.

"Just nerves," I dismissed it, looking back to the battle. Ike was taking down a couple of enemy soldiers together with an imposingly large figure in blue armor. I knew the person behind the armor as Gatrie, one of the Greil Mercenaries that had left the group after Greil's death—the other being Shinon, who'll be absent for some time yet. I could also see a smaller figure with a mane of black hair poking its head up and aiming a bow and arrow. Astrid was her name, I remembered, and she was Gatrie's current employer. Thankfully, we'd be getting them both as assets and allies… for better or for worse. I was yet to see Astrid make any solid connections, but at least she had an angle were she could shoot openly at the enemy ship.

Just as things seemed to be going well and the advance team began to press the enemy off the apostle's ship, that unexpected turn for the worse that happens so often happened.

…Yeah.

It was a hook—a grappling hook, to be exact. Three prongs, each one pointed for maximum effect. Of this one, two points had grasped the side of _our_ ship and were digging in nice and tight. Surprisingly without hesitation, I rushed over to the side to see what the hell was going on. What I found shouldn't have shocked me as much as it did. Down in the water between our ships were two dinghies with three men each in them. One goon carrying a harpoon was already on his way up the grappling hook's attached rope with astonishing speed.

"They're trying to board!" I shouted as my arm instinctively went for an arrow. I loaded and fired quickly, suddenly realizing why we'd really been left behind. No doubt we should have been expecting something like this. Just because it didn't happen in the game doesn't mean it's not possible.

My arrow lodged itself firmly in the first climber's eye socket, sending him bouncing off the rim of the dinghy and into the swirling drink. Of course, as I mentioned, there was indeed and other boat. Its men had already got their own hook attached to us and were climbing it as well. Within the space of about five seconds, I had three more men scaling the damn sides of our once safe vessel.

"Mordecai! I need you to rip these hooks out! Somebody take care of the other side!" I yelled as my hand went for another arrow. I don't know what exactly prompted me to start acting all command-like. It was like my mind had leaped into some sort of overdrive and I started barking out orders. Maybe I'd been watching Nasir shout as his crew too much.

As I took a shot at the next climber, I was pleased to find our resident tiger rumbling up and applying his meaty hands to the grappling hook. It was dug in pretty well, though, so progress wasn't as instant as I might have hoped. To make matters worse, the climber I'd shot at had a shield strapped to his arm. He was blocking my shots, and I didn't have time to find a better angle.

"Hyaah!"

The shout diverted my attention to where the other rope was, and there I saw Marcia digging the end of her lance into the lead climber there. Brom and Sothe were there, too, both of them tugging on the hook with little result.

I couldn't watch this very long, however, returning to my own rope. Oddly enough, I turned just in time to see Mordecai have success. The wood around the hook's prongs splintered, allowing the beastman to lift it up and hang it over the side for dropping. The climbing soldiers screamed in terror at this, and I could only stare as Mordecai held the whole thing up like it was just a heavy rock or something. The two men, neither high enough to make a good jump for the deck, were hanging on for their lives, and Mordecai was looking at me. Was he waiting for my say-so? Who's to say?

Before I could think of what to do next, I suddenly remembered the other rope. I looked to see if they were having any luck, only to find that the second climber hadn't reached the top yet. Seeing that he didn't have anything to protect himself with, I got out another arrow and prepared to fire. I'd only just established a firing line when the side of the ship literally came undone. It was a hatch, like where a cannon might poke out from. I stared for a moment as the hatch lifted the second climber up, his leg dangling precariously over the side as he lost his balance. He didn't even have time to right himself before a pink gauntlet reached out and grabbed him by the ankle. He shrieked, released the rope, and was pulled mercilessly down. The third climber reached out to grab his comrade, but only succeeded in getting himself pulled off the rope as well. They both fell onto the bow of one of the dinghies, effectively causing it to flip over with a lovely splash.

Jill's head poked out from the hatch, no doubt admiring her handiwork. I was about to yell some sort of praise at her, but I was sidetracked when I noticed that she was actually looking at the rope with two men hanging from on it. In just that seven-or-so second sequence, I'd nearly forgotten about Mordecai. He was still standing there, holding the hook over the side of the boat.

"Should… Mordecai… drop?" the man grunted with heavy, slow words. I was about to say yes when my mind had a flash. One of those dinghies was still upright. What if they just got back in it and used the hook to board again?

"I've got it," I said with a grit of my teeth. Thankfully, I'd remembered to bring my knife for this endeavor. I'd cared for it as best I knew how during the long journey, and now it was finally time to give it some use. It sawed through the rope with relative ease, sending both men plunging after their fellows with screams of absolute terror.

With that done, I hung my head and heaved a heavy sigh. My heart was beating a mile a minute, and my lungs felt like they were crying for more oxygen. Somewhere in those thirty seconds of action, I'd forgotten to breathe.

As I turned around and leaned back against the siding, taking a moment to not be watching a battle or dealing with crazy grappling hook pirates, I took a gander out onto the horizon. I could see rolling green glens on land only just a short distance away. That was Begnion, I told myself. We were almost off this goddamn ship and onto better and brighter things. The battle behind us was quieting down.

_This shit is almost fucking over…_

Then I noticed that there was another hook dug in on that side of the ship—the side none of us had been watching because there wasn't a battle going on there. I had to bite back a fierce swear as a hand came over the side, lifting the intimidating visage of an enemy swordsman up to join us on the deck.

I freaked.

I panicked.

I bum-rushed his ass.

I can only assume that he'd been so impressed with himself having made footfall that he just forgot to raise his sword. Or maybe I was just a damn fast runner when I was scared. Either way, I was on him before he was able to ready his weapon and gave him what I like to call a five-knuckled welcome. His nose crunched under my fist, the force of everything sending him flipping over the siding like a bowling pin.

One of my prouder moments, if I do say so myself.

"You Crimean scum!"

Regrettably, I can't say that I'd made a good case for myself with the remaining Daein's that were climbing up the rope. I peered over to see, and instantly hosed my pants at coming face-to-face with a Daein axeman. He was glaring up at me, his eyes wide with hatred as his grimy teeth clutched around the handle of his large cleaver. On top of that, behind him were two more climbers, all just as angry as the first.

This was the most frightening sight I'd seen in my entire life. I froze, stiff as a statue in January. I didn't know what to do. I think somebody might have shouted my name, but, in the end, it didn't matter.

As I debated on which god and/or goddess to pray to in my final moments, another hatch sprung open. This one was perfectly calculated, however, knocking the second climber in the head and sending him down. I was flabbergasted by this, as was my to-be murderer. He turned around to see what had happen, and we both reared back in shock as not Jill, but Volke leaped out from the hatch and onto the rope. He was an impressive sight, the centerpiece of his rescuing visage being that of the knife in his mouth. He pulled out one knife, this one having been on his belt, and flung it down at the bottom climber. The man took it to the neck and fell, leaving just the one whom had been staring me down. A hand came up for the axe, but it made no grasp. Volke removed the knife from his gob and used it to stab the axeman in the chest. All it took after that was a pull, and the ship was finally safe.

I watched for a moment in awe as Volke shimmied up the rope, absent-mindedly helping him up over the siding once he'd reached. I remember him giving me this look, as if to say that he knew he was the coolest thing I'd ever seen and I wished I was just like him. My mouth may have been hanging open in a dopey manner. If it was, I was too distracted to care.

Just then, cheering started to fill the air. We were all drawn to the other ships, where the mercenaries and Begnion troops could be found waving their weapons skyward. The crows were gone, and all of the 'pirates' seemed to be jumping overboard.

That was it. We'd done it. The hard part was over.

My legs turned to jelly as this happy thought took over my thought process. _I needed a nap._

* * *

A couple of hours after the battle, after all of the nonsense with the apostle had been settled, we had once again set our sails into the wind. I was thankful that I didn't have to witness the meeting with the apostle, as I'd been busy not giving a damn, but I did manage to catch a glimpse of her as she moved back onto her own ship. Three words to describe her were short, colorful, and… short again. I couldn't remember how old she was supposed to be, but she was most definitely a mere child. It was hilarious, though, when she went marching around with an entourage of servants at her heels. You'd think she was the most important person in the world or something.

…but she seriously was, so I couldn't actually laugh.

Anyway, it was getting near dark when I finally got a good enough wind in me to go back out on deck and have a smoke. I was standing on the bow, watching the dark shape of the apostle's ship guide us towards the port we were to make landfall at. The sun had crept under the horizon, leaving a golden orange sky to sit behind the mountainous shore. We had gotten close to land, and you could see the lights of villages along the coast. It was a very refreshing sight. I was actually surprised that there weren't more out watching it, but I can imagine most of them were tired from the battle.

"Arrow, right?"

I flinched a little as the voice interrupted my moment of personal pleasure. I turned to find none other than Ike joining me. It took a lot of fiber not to be downright shocked he was there. Out of the whole three months, he'd never held a true conversation with me—not since that first day, that is. I didn't know what to say, aside from the obvious.

"That's me," I turned awkwardly back to our course.

"I was talking to some people at dinner," he spoke, standing next to me and gazing out like I was. "I hear you were instrumental in keeping the ship safe from boarders."

The comment was unexpected, much like the whole chat. I didn't know what to say, so I kept my mouth wisely shut.

"It's funny, I guess," he says, catching my interest with that. What was funny, I wondered. "I wasn't sure what to make of you when you just appeared out of nowhere back in Toha. Titania and Soren both don't seem to think much of you, and I was inclined to agree with them after seeing you get waylaid by that crow that day."

I closed my eyes as he reminded me of the battle with the crows at Goldoa. I'd been wounded because I couldn't react fast enough. It had apparently been quite the sight when I'd done my scrambling act across the deck with a bow in one hand and blood seeping out of the other. Boyd had made sure to remind me of it for a good four weeks afterwards.

"But, then, after hearing about your exploits at dinner, I asked my sister what she thought of you," he said before pausing. I looked over to see him pull out something I'd not expected him to have. It was a pipe, not dissimilar to the ones Brom and Zihark used. I watched silently as he went through the process of lighting in, which involved a sliver of rolled paper and a nearby lantern, and then as he took a long huff and let it out for the cool evening to enjoy.

"She says that you're the one of the nicest people she's ever met."

I stayed silent.

"So, who are you really?" he kept on as I looked away again, sucking idly on the end of my own pipe. "Are you the guy who shoots men off the sides of ships, or are you the nicest guy my sister's ever met?"

That question hit me… or maybe it didn't really hit so much as it just washed over me. It came like the smell of Ike's pipe weed. He wasn't using the same stuff that Brom had given me. It was smoother, and not quite as stern. Maybe even a little sweeter, if tobacco could even been sweet, kind of like a clove. The smell reminded me of an antique store. It formed an unfamiliar, unwanted pit in my gut when I took it in, just like the question he'd asked.

What was I? Had I somehow become this killer that was dangerous to people, even his friends? It was hard to imagine, but then there was that soldier back in Toha. There were the crows. There was that guy climbing the ship. I'd killed them, and I'd not batted an eyelash in remorse.

…and I still wasn't.

"To be honest…" I finally said something after a moment. For whatever reason, I'd lost my appetite for smoking. I took out my pipe and tossed the embers out into the wind, which blew them forward as we went. "I'm just a guy. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Just a guy…" he took that at face value. It was all the truth I could give him, for better or for worse. "Well, you've helped us quite a bit even though we haven't asked anything of you. And Mist trusts you."

He held out his hand and smiled. "You're welcome to join my company, if you want."

I looked at the hand and didn't hesitate. Our grips met, and I gave him the firmest handshake of my life.

"It'd be an honor, Commander."

* * *

**FUN FACT: This chapter is over 2000 words longer than the last one. GASP!**

**Thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated!**


	8. To Infinity and Begnion

**I love you readers. I really do.**

**So, in advance… SORRY FOR THE ANGST.**

* * *

_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 7 – To Infinity and Begnion_

* * *

We made landfall in Begnion at about noon the day after the battle with the 'pirates'. Needless to say, nobody but the sailors stayed behind to unload everything. We took what was ours and never looked back. Nasir came too, of course. While he was captaining the ship and all, the men and the ship belonged to the empire. As far as I could remember, Gallia was paying him to refocus his efforts into helping Elincia. I hadn't been present when that deal was done, and I couldn't remember the exact details from the game. All I knew was that, when all of the dust settled, I was going to have to trust him.

Anyway, once we'd met up with the apostle's entourage, it was discovered that Her Colorfulness was eager to continue on to the capital. Within an hour of setting foot on solid land for the first time in three months, it was time to move again. We left the port town in a veritable convoy of wagons, the middlemost of which was this elaborate red and gold feature of a carriage that could only play host to the empress herself. The rest of us got the basic wooden and canvas affairs, and the canvas was only if you were lucky. A few of us were just sitting on the front seats of open supply carts.

Of course, I was one of the unlucky ones. I wound up sitting on the very back of the convoy, nestled at the rear of an open cart full of bags of this and boxes of that. Brom was driving, Zihark was riding shotgun, and I was watching our rear flank.

…Not much of a watch, really. The only thing I could see through the trail of our collective pipe fog was the ground, and the only things down there were the mounds of literal shit a convoy of horse-drawn vehicles tends to produce. _It smelled awful_. That was why we smoked, though. Because the herb we'd bought in the port smelled better… or, at least, it numbed our senses to the point of the shit just not smelling as bad. It all just added up to be a big disappointment for me. I'd been kind of excited to see some nature. Instead I got to smell horse manure. At least I didn't have to walk. Silver linings… with a touch of gray smoke.

Anyway, it only took us until nightfall to reach our first stop on our romp. It was a decently sized village with an absolutely massive mansion at its heart. No doubt it was some noble's stomping grounds, but nothing I'd ever heard of before. The apostle, her people, and the princess, all disappeared into the mansion while the rest of us were divvied out into wherever lodging was available. Unfortunately, Soren was the one doing the divvying, so I wound up in a room with Gatrie. The mage must have done the listing by join time and gender.

"Ooooh…" the man would carry on, looking out the window of our hut too get a peek at the hut next door. It was the girls' hut, naturally, and his claim was that he was worried about Astrid. Talk about loads of manure…

"She'll be fine," I tried to assuage the knight's worries as I lounged in the curiously small bed that came with the place. It was late and I'd made sure eat as much dinner as I could. Breakfast wasn't going to stay down the next day if the smell didn't improve. "Every woman in that place is a trained killer. I'm sure her safety isn't something we need to be concerned about."

"But that's what I'm worried about," he continued to fuss. "Lady Astrid isn't some hardened soldier dog. She's delicate, like a violet in the summer field."

Of all the people for me to be roomed with, why'd I have to get the one with a sense of adoration and poetry?

"Yes, and violets grow best when you're not looking at them," I made up some crapshoot words of wisdom before rolling over and trying my hardest to get some sleep. I tossed for quite a while, unable to find the peace I'd had on the ship. There wasn't a steady tide of waves and a weary atmosphere to help me along anymore. Now I just had Gatrie, whom was agonizingly unhelpful.

The next day was a repeat. I sat at the convoy's rear and did relatively nothing. I didn't even smoke, not having the heart or the will to go through all the steps… that and I didn't have a light. To compound my troubles, the journey wasn't going to get any better. As one of the Begnion soldiers had told me a dinner that first night, the journey to Sienne, Begnion's bright and shiny capital city, was bound to take us at least a week. The road we were on was old and, thus, curved every which way in order to go through towns and avoid various old woods and rolling hillsides. I wondered for a moment why there wasn't some sort of grand highway made to avoid this kind of thing, but then I remembered that we were in Begnion. Their shtick was that they were mired down in tradition and political corruption. They'd always taken the old road, and every two-bit noble who made money off of it would fight tooth and nail to keep people traveling on it.

What managed to make things worse was every noon when, in the heat of the day, the convoy would have to stop. Why? Because it was lunch time and the Her Holiness couldn't miss a meal. We'd stop, sit there for anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, and then _maybe_ a loaf of bread would make its way back to us. There weren't many of our fellow mercenaries hanging in the back with us—the majority of the procession was made up of Begnions—so we had to be 'remembered' if we actually wanted to get some lunch. One day Zihark actually decided to go out and pick some fruit out of the woods. I dare say that was the best meal I got all trip, if not since I'd arrived in Tellius. Apples, man. Apples for the rest of the day.

Most nights we were forced to camp, except, in this case, 'camping' is synonymous with 'building a small city in which most of the buildings are made from canvas and sticks'. The instant we'd stop for the evening, an army of servants and soldiers would get to work throwing up tents and setting up fires. Cooking would get underway, water would be fetched, ale would be distributed to those that wanted it, and I'd try my best to not get stuck helping out. One thing I had to thank the bow for here was that it definitely separated me from the servants. I eventually learned that, so long as had the bow on my back and my quiver at the ready, nobody would ever ask me to do anything I didn't have to. It wasn't all bad, though. We mercenaries got our own slice of camp, but we only got three tents. I wound up in the second men's tent, shared between Brom, Zihark, Sothe, Kieran, and myself. I think Volke and Mordecai were supposed to be there, too, but they never showed. I saw Lethe stalking out into the woods one evening, so I can only assume she and Mordecai were staying away from camp.

As for Volke… well… I'm sure he managed somehow. I wouldn't be shocked if he spent the majority of his time carousing the convoy's monetary supplies. He wouldn't be the only one to have the idea. I'd toyed with the thought in my head at one point, and we actually had to stop Sothe from going in for a heist one night.

"No," I whispered at him, holding back anger as we sat around the fire that late afternoon. I was downright furious on the inside, though I can't remember if it's because he was planning on thieving or because he thought I'd be game to help him.

"Oh, c'mon," he scowled at my disagreement. "It's not like they actually need it."

"But what if we get caught, hm?" I asked, sliding a discrete nod towards a Begnion soldier that was passing by. "We get caught and Ike claims us, how does that reflect on the princess? And that's assuming that he even would claim us. Do you wanna get left behind? How about thrown in prison? What do you think they do to people who try to steal the apostle's money?"

"I won't get caught," he says, not assuring me in the slightest.

"I've seen it. They string them up by their thumbs in the square in front of Mainal Cathedral," Marcia chimed in, dropping the name of Begnion's capitol building as she did. "The crowd throws their gubbins at them until they pass out or worse, and then they get hauled down into the dungeons. Nobody ever escapes from down there."

These words put a somber and slightly perturbed mood over our campfire. Everyone just kind of stared at Marcia for a while until Brom finally got done with what I guess was a particularly good huff.

"I don't think that was absolutely necessary," the farmer commented with a slight shudder under his tone. It was here that I remembered that Brom was afraid of torture, which was pretty much what Marcia had just implied. Thankfully, the man had a bit more backbone in this reality than he seemed to in Path of Radiance. He reminded me more if his character in Radiant Dawn, especially in regards to the opening act of part two. The bit where he and Nephenee bravely rushed out to knock some sense into the wannabe revolutionaries in their village was pretty epic, if I do say so myself.

"O-Okay, fine," Sothe finally backed down, going back to staring into the fire as most of us would do for hours on end. Good times and laughter weren't really on the menu, if you catch my drift.

To be honest, in spite of our intentions with coming to Begnion, it was hard to get the impression that any of us actually wanted to be there. With the exceptions of Ike, Soren, and a few certain others, most of the mercenaries walked around with depressed faces. I could understand how they felt, though. They were far away from their homes, some farther than others, and many of them were suffering from the timeless plague of homesickness.

Me? Gee… Where do begin? I found myself struggling with the whole 'being in a damn video game' thing. On top of that, I was missing my life, my friends, my precious technology, and everything else from what my life had once been. I thought I'd dealt with those demons back on the ship, but now things were different again. There wasn't a whole lot to do while we were with the convoy. There wasn't a whole ship for me to walk around and find something to do in. All I could do was sit and wait for us to arrive at Sienne. This led me back to pretty much where I'd been that first day. I was brooding, and there are few things I hate doing more than brooding.

The worst thoughts of all were when I thought of my grandparents. What was their reaction my supposed disappearance from home? Those two… They loved me so much. I was pretty much all they had, and now I was gone for no good reason. Some nights, as I lay in a weak sleeping bag and prayed that I might get to sleep, I'd think of the bedtime stories granddad and I would make up. We'd go around, have crazy adventures, do fun things…

I had to leave the tent late one night and go out into the woods to cry.

I went far out enough to where I could just barely see one of the fires, sat my butt down behind a tree, and started to unravel. It was here that I realized how much of a mess I was on the inside. I pulled my mask off, feeling the flush heat my face as tears spilled down my cheeks. Crying for me was hard. I'd done of lot of it in my younger days, and by this point in my life it took some serious effort to do anything besides balk, wail, and heave. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd truly shed real tears. There had been some of the worst days of my life, funerals for people I'd deeply cared about, horrific bouts with pain, but there I was nonetheless. I was curled up in a ball, crying to myself like the lost child I really was.

The world sat still, dark and hazy as I let my feelings spill out in my tears. Between my broken sobs and blubbering coughs, I could see things that took me back. I could see my grandparents faces that first day—the day they'd been officially named my legal guardians. I could see Jake the day I'd met him, remembering the first time I went with him to his house to play video games. I could see Beth, my best friend for practically all of my life.

"_Robbie!_" she'd call my name as we'd see each other for the first time in what felt like ages. We'd hug, and every bit of discomfort that a family affair might bring me would be gone. It was such a good feeling—such a good time. We were young and happy… There wasn't a care in the world between us.

"Why do you cry, beorc?"

The voice scared me in a way I can't really describe. I guess that the closest I can get is by admitting that I've always had an aversion for being seen in a moment of weakness—not unlike how I was right then. I _never_ cried in public, not if I could help it. So, when that question came out of nowhere, and I realized that I had been found out, I panicked. My body jolted, causing me to reel and make a motion like I was going to get up and run away. Unfortunately, being distraught seems to have this adverse effect on me where I can't really do much of anything while under its emotional spell. Instead of getting up and making tracks for a different part of the woods, I fell face-first into the dirt.

"What's the matter? Are you mad?"

The voice spoke again, and this time I managed to recognize it. It was Lethe, the cat warrior from Gallia. I must have disturbed her rest with my bawling. As I lay there, I thought about what she meant by 'mad'. She didn't mean it like 'angry'. She meant it like 'crazy'. And there it was. Was I crazy? I didn't know, to be honest. Everything around me had stopped making sense, and, all of the sudden, I found myself being presented with heavy sentiments swirling around in my head like they were being stirred into the steaming cup of coffee that was my ongoing emotional breakdown.

I didn't answer her. All I could do was idle in that spot, sprawled on the ground gasping for what air could sustain me.

"Are you ill? There's a doctor in the camp, I think."

I stayed silent as my brain slowly switched formats. The thoughts of home, the brooding, the crying, the wishing, the overall melancholy was being forced out. As this carried on, I used the vast majority of my remaining energy to reach out and grasp onto the tree I'd been sitting against before Lethe arrived. I dug my fingers into the bark, not caring whether I ripped my gloves or not. Using both hands, I pulled myself up enough for my feet to get planted firmly on the ground. Once that was done, I brought myself up to full height, dried my eyes, gave a hard snort, spat the excess behind the tree where Lethe couldn't see, and then finally turned to face the cat woman.

It was dark, of course, probably on near midnight by this point, so all I could really see of her was the glow of her eyes in the moonlight. There were some vague points of her silhouette against other slightly lit areas behind where she stood, but it wasn't much to go by.

"No thanks," I said in a voice that was more callous than intended. "I'm fine. Sorry for disturbing you."

I walked off towards camp without anything else being exchanged, feeling cold and empty inside. I'd never felt so hollow before. All of those thoughts that had been eating at me were gone. I couldn't say what had happened to them. It was like they'd just gone off into the forest and I'd left them there. But I didn't want to talk to Lethe—I didn't want to talk to _anyone_. I just wanted to go back into the tent and sleep for the rest of the night.

So I did.

The journey continued the next day without any fuss. Nobody asked where I'd gone, though I did pick up a very hard stare from Lethe during breakfast. I paid her no mind, just taking it as she now thought me to be an extremely strange person. This was fine with me, so long as she didn't question me about it. It was none of her business, I believed, so, even if she did ask, I could just refuse to tell her. If there was anybody in the group that I had no care to make nice with, it was that cold-hearted, racist, cat-tailed bitch.

…In case you didn't pick it up, I wasn't a big fan of Lethe. I didn't like her personality in the games, and that bias had indeed carried over into the reality. She was a good fighter, however, and, in retrospect, I guess I really should have been nicer to her. She did save my life during the battle against the ravens, after all, but her interrupting me during what had been intended as a very private and personal moment ruined any hopes a potential friendship might have had.

The journey from there was just a slog down the path. We did eventually reach a straight portion of road, exiting the trees and entering a wide prairie. Unfortunately, the heaven decided to take this opportunity to piss some rain out on us. Not even good, hard rain. It was just constant drizzle, with an occasional couple of minutes' worth of anything referable to a downpour.

For the record, I'm a fan of rain so long as I'm not stuck out in it. I like the sound of it, the light pitter-patter of it against the sidewalk mixed in with the background sounds of thunder simmering through the clouds. Then again, what is rain but consistent treble and thunder but the hard-beating bass? Sometimes I'd have rain noise play under some soft music while I wrote silly things on my computer. It was great for relaxing, unwinding when schoolwork was eating me alive.

As I sat in the back of that wagon, huddled drearily under a cloak someone had given me during our time on the ship, I slowly started to hum one of those songs I'd listen to. I'll admit, I had intended to actually sing the dirge, but I was so drained that all I could get out were lame groans in tone.

It was one of the worst days of my life.

Ironically, it was also one my best days in Tellius so far.

* * *

**Sorry for the really short chapter here, but I didn't want the landing and Sienne to be the same chapter.**

**Thanks for reading!** **Review if you feel.**


	9. Ever Upper Class High Society

**LIGHTHEARTED MISADVENTURE, I CHOOSE YOU!**

* * *

_**Needles in My Eyes**_

_Chapter 8 – Ever Upper Class High Society_

* * *

We arrived in Sienne before the rainy mood from the day before had managed to be fully dismissed.

It was quite the feeling, riding through the streets of the richest and most powerful city in the world while every single person watched. Thankfully, on that last day, Zihark had traded spots with me. I rode next to Brom while our friendly myrmidon stretched out in the back with a stomach ache. It gave me a good view of the _parades_ of people trying to get a get a glimpse of the apostle's entourage.

Let me tell you, Sienne was an absolutely _massive_ place. It wasn't hard to equate it with London or Paris, with the other towns we'd traveled through on our journey being nothing but meek villages in comparison. I felt rather out of place, I must admit. Even with my Arrow persona active, I felt like I was in a place that I simply didn't belong. Then again, maybe Arrow really didn't belong there either. At the same time, none of the mercenaries really seemed to fit in as well. Brom especially seemed to be looking around like he was on a different planet, a tidbit that was helped along by the fact that stares from the crowd were coming in left and right.

It was a good two hours after entering the city that we finally arrived at the campus of Mainal Cathedral, none other than the apostle's personal stomping grounds. Ike, Elincia, Mist, and a few others got to go in and see the place. The rest of us had to unload our junk and have it moved to our new housing facilities.

And by 'new housing facilities', I mean 'tenements'.

I don't know who exactly had handled our living arrangements, but I can only assume that it was one of the apostle's people. I'd thought we'd be staying in the cathedral, like the game suggested. Nope. There was a shortage of room, it seemed. Ike and the higher-ups got in, but everyone else had to cram their things into a quad of two-room flats. Thankfully, there were only fourteen—twelve if you count the fact that Lethe chose to sleep in the attic and Volke failing to be present at all—of us being crammed, so one of them got to be used as storage. I wound up rooming with Brom, Zihark, Sothe, and Jill. Why the girl amongst the boys, you ask? I honestly don't know. I guess Mia, Marcia, Ilyana, and Nephenee didn't want her around.

Thankfully for everything, though, I didn't have to spend much time pissing around the place. Within the first week, we'd managed to establish ourselves in the city and started taking work. While Ike, Nasir, and the princess spearheaded our gaining favor with the government, Titania and Soren spearheaded turning the Greil Mercenaries into Begnion's number one troupe of freelance blades. We were all very pent up from our time on the ship, so taking jobs must have served as a great release for the more combat-prone of us. By the end of the first month, we'd managed to buy ourselves a base not too far from where we were living.

…In case you haven't picked up on it yet, we were in Begnion for quite a while.

The days were long and the missions were longer. Soren had us divided into groups that would take on specific tasks. Titania, Oscar, Boyd, Rolf, Gatrie, Mia, and Lethe were Bandit Team One, while Soren, Marcia, Kieran, Nephenee, Brom, Zihark, and Mordecai were Bandit Team Two. They handled brigand problems in or around the city, sometimes going out as far as the surrounding province. The rest of us took more domestic jobs. The majority of those not on bandit duties were women, so a lot of it was housework. Mist, Ilyana, and Astrid put together one hell of a housecleaning and laundry service, while Sothe, Jill, and I took odd jobs in the middle-class homes and market. Thankfully, thanks to a very high expectation of work ethic that Titania managed to beat into us every morning she wasn't off fighting barbarians, work actually wasn't hard to find because we became known for our quality. So long as we didn't mention that we were foreigners, the people tended to love us and pay well.

…What? You don't believe me? Sorry to disappoint you. You want an awesome tale of adventure? My apologies, but I wasn't a part of that group. If you want something truly exciting, ask Volke. I'm pretty sure that he was off running assassinations while I was scrubbing floors and working as a substitute valet for the Underduke of Fuckall.

No, I'm not joking. I spent two weeks changing some greasy old noble's clothes three times a day. I contemplated using the money I earned there to hire Volke to the murder the bastard afterwards, but decided not to after I accidentally spent the money on a dress.

…

You want to know why I bought a dress, don't you? Settle in, this is a weird one.

So, only about a day and a half after I'd finally been released and paid for my valet job, I was taking a well-deserved break at our merc base. It was a decently large building, having been an inn under previous ownership, so there was ample room to spread out and catch forty winks if one needed to. I was sitting next to the window having a smoke when, out of nowhere, Sothe came bounding in like he'd been branded on his thieving ass.

"Arrow!" he rushed up to me, yelling rather loudly.

"What?" I reared back, almost afraid of what he was about to tell me. I'd never seen Sothe so flustered, not even when a guard had threatened to whip him for making a sarcastic quip in his direction or when Lethe had threatened to eat him in his sleep.

"Some guy in the market handed me this," he claimed before jamming a sliver of parchment into my hand. I took it and stared at it keenly. Believe it or not, I'd been practicing my reading of Tellius's written word while I was in Sienne- for better or for worse, as I'd never have gotten the valet job without being able to read. Mist and Jill had taught me, with a little help from Astrid on the side, but that's not really important for this story.

"'We have your girlfriend. Bring all of your gold to the southern auction house tonight or we will kill her,'" I read the note as clearly as I could. Needless to say, I was unamused. Not only did this mean that I was involved with a goddamn hostage situation, but it also mean that I was going to have to actually _solve_ a goddamn hostage situation. To quote a certain obscure secret agent, 'I HATE HOSTAGES.' More often than not, they aren't worth the safe return. It wasn't the first one I'd had to handle since my arrival in Sienne. There'd been two before, both of which involved a lot of crying and possibly even more bloodshed. Thankfully, that kind of thing was mainly left up to the bandit teams, but they weren't always home.

"You think they mean Jill?" the thief asked me as I crumpled the paper up, tossed it into the burning fireplace, and proceeded to douse my pipe. For the record, it was our day off and Jill had decided to spend it uptown in search of better working opportunities for us.

"Who else would they call our girlfriend?" I rolled my eyes as I stood up and started making for where I had my gear set. "I can't imagine somebody capturing anyone else and then making demands to you."

I quickly sat aside the fact that I knew about Micaiah for moment, her being Sothe's greatest friend and possibly lover. Thankfully, the odds of Micaiah being in Sienne and somebody using her to get to Sothe were extremely unlikely.

"Uh, yeah…" he audibly flinched as I put my jacket on and loaded my quiver. "Have you ever been to the southern auction house?"

"A few times, yeah," I nodded as my quiver was buckled and my knife was sheathed. "It's pretty open, kind of like the opera house. There's a stage where they display the items under bid. That's probably where the deal's gonna go down."

"How much gold do you think they'll want?"

I looked at him like was crazy as I pulled my mask out of my pocket and began to tie it on.

"Who said we were giving them any gold?"

"Isn't that how these things work?" he seemed a bit put off by my blatant disregard for accepting our newest enemy's instructions. "We give in to their demands and they return Jill with all of her pieces intact."

"Yeah, but, much to what's going to be their dismay, we can't quite give them all of our gold, can we?" I reminded him once my mask was tied. "How many pieces do you have on you?"

"Twenty," he patted his pockets. "I've got about two hundred more back at the house."

"And I've got about a hundred there myself, but they're probably expecting something more extravagant than that. If they actually know who we are, then they'll want the company's savings, which we can't get because Soren's three days away with the key," is my long-winded reply. "What did the guy that gave you the note look like?"

"I think he was one of the merchants."

"One we've worked for?"

"I don't think so. I've seen him selling skins across from Broderick's stall a few times, though."

I took this in as I picked up my bow became what my mind thought of as 'officially combat ready'. Broderick was also a skin merchant, memorable because of how much work he'd given us in the past. We ran deliveries around the city for him at least once a week. Sothe had hunted with him a few times as well. Unfortunately, there were several skin merchants operating in that particular sector of the market, so I wasn't able to think of anyone specific.

"Then he's either being coaxed by a larger group, or we're not dealing with a major threat here," I concluded after weighing options. No mere skins merchant could afford to properly put duress on us, even though we were vastly undermanned at the moment. I don't think anyone was really thinking about it at the time, but there were times when we were stretched rather thin sometimes. I'm not really sure what the big idea was aside from maybe we were trying to raise as much money as possible for the upcoming retaking of Crimea- not to mention the sacking of Daein along the way. I knew that Begnion was likely to be fronting a good bit of the bill themselves, but a little extra spending money never hurt, I say.

"He didn't seem very nervous," Sothe informed me as he followed me out of the base, leaving the receptionist we paid horrible wages to watch us go and wonder what we were talking about. "After giving me the note, he didn't even try to hide."

We had just walked through the door at this point, at which I turned around to glare the green haired lad. I honestly couldn't believe that he had just said that.

"Seriously?! And you didn't think for a second to grab him and ask him what he was up to?!" I snapped.

He quickly took a few steps back, grimacing because he knew I was right.

"I… I didn't think it was something like this!" he moved to defend himself. "I thought it was just some sort of secretive job offer! The guy didn't look particularly bad or anything. "

I sighed before turning back around and pressing on towards the auction house. Thankfully, it was later in the afternoon, so most of the civilians were already in their homes doing things related to healthy eating and relaxation. The sun was preparing to set behind Mainal, and I couldn't help but feel rather unhappy that I had to go rescue Jill. Don't get me wrong, now. Jill and I had a much better relationship at this point than we had during the journey over, but, as I said earlier, rescuing hostages was pretty high on my list of things I'd rather eat paste than do.

Given the fact that Sienne was fucking massive and the southern auction house was literally on the other side of town, we took what amounted to a cab in order to get there. Thankfully, somebody had thought of making a system of rentable horse-drawn carriages. They weren't cheap, but our paramilitary wages were enough to help us out there. As we rode, I tried my best to think up a strategy. The auction house was, as I'd mentioned before, something like an amphitheater. It was composed mainly of a large room with large stage. There weren't any balcony seats or anything, and the auctioned goods were kept in an unconnected warehouse, so there wasn't much to go by in terms of places to hide. Thankfully, that worked both ways. They wouldn't be able to hide from us either.

Still, that didn't mean that we'd have an advantage. If they had more than two armed people with them, then we would be out of luck. Nothing against Sothe's fighting skill or anything, but his expertise stood more on the side of working locks rather than shanking baddies- that was more Volke's thing. I, on the other hand, in spite of the fact that I had filled in for Rolf on a few inner-city bandit runs, was still on the 'underperforming' side of things. To clarify, Boyd could whomp three guys in a single swing of his axe. I, meanwhile, was lucky to hit a moving target with my bow. Most of my kills were clean-ups or opportunities.

What do I mean by 'opportunities'? One time I dropped a chandelier and took out five guys. No joke. One of my finer moments, in fact.

Anyway, we eventually arrived at the auction house, with our cabby dropping us a few buildings away so that we could have more of a surprising element.

"What's the plan?" Sothe asked me as we slid through the mostly deserted streets like a couple of neer-do-wells.

"I was thinking of two ways for this to go down," I suggested. "Either one of us can go in and distract them while the other sneaks in the back and takes them down, or we can both sneak in and go for a double surprise attack."

"The second one sounds better," he said right away.

"Yeah, but, without the distraction, they'll be more likely to hear us," I brought up a very important factoid. "That, and we don't know how many there are. We might be sneaking into a confrontation with twenty guys."

On that note, I suddenly realized how likely it was that we were about to be in way over our heads. It wasn't like we had any other choice. Both bandit teams were away, the girls had gone off without telling us where they were going, and there was no way we'd be able to get into Mainal to find Ike and Nasir within a reasonable amount of time. Waiting for help to show up could mean Jill's untimely demise, which was something I wanted avoid if at all possible. Titania would rip our heads off and crap down our necks if she found out that we had let Jill die because we were too chicken-shit to go in after her.

"Well, in that case, I've got an idea for the distraction," he smirked, cueing me to frown. Not only did I not have a whole lot of faith in whatever harebrained idea Sothe had just conjured up, but I also didn't like the idea of me having to take out however many guards there might be. Still, at the end of the day, it was still better than just rushing in and trying to be badass. That was something we'd need Ike for.

Once we finally got up to the auction house, I told Sothe to give me five minutes before doing whatever he thought he was going to do. That said, I headed around back to where they brought in the auctioned items. This was merely a large warehouse door with drapes covering them. There wasn't anybody around, it seemed, so I passed through the drapery as slowly and quietly as possible. The inside was dark, though it was possible to see light peeking in from under the stage's rear curtain. It was through this curtain that items would appear onto the stage. I decided to make use of my five minutes to remove my shoes here, deciding that I'd be fifty times more silent sneaking onto the stage without them. If I didn't want to take the creaky steps or the ramp, then I'd have to take climb up, and the clap of my boot as I put my foot up would no doubt give me away.

Once I was down to my very comfy woolen socks, I crept up to the curtain and lifted it up a little at the bottom so that I could see the stage. There I found three men standing around a chair. In the chair was what appeared to be a young woman dressed in what I'd last seen Jill wearing. Their head was mostly obscured by a burlap sack that had been tied onto their head, but I was fairly certain we had our girl. That didn't concern me. What _really_ got me was the fact that two of the three guys were adorned in red and silver armor. It was too well-made to just be bandit armor. No, those two were Begnion military. One appeared to just be your everyday soldier, but the other wore darker red on his plates, and his hand held a fine axe. He must have been a dracoknight. Much to my luck, he'd left his mount in the stables.

Yes, wyverns were kept in stables. Where do you think we kept Jill's?

"What if they don't come tonight? We have to report back to the barracks in a couple of hours, Frenley," the dracoknight looked to the one man who wasn't armored. Frenley the skins merchant, eh? I think I might have heard Broderick drop the name once before, but I hadn't known who he was talking about. Now I knew. I recognized this character's mug. He was a square-faced guy with a greasy brown ponytail and clothes that only just barely hit the bottom edge of classy. I'd spotted him glaring at us from across the way before. Never thought he'd resort to kidnapping just for petty revenge or whatever was driving him here.

"I'm sure they'll be here any minute," Frenley sounded uncertain as he paced back and forth across the stage, making a small yet annoying tap with every step.

"Can ya stop with the bloody striding, mate?" the regular soldier requested, sounding much less self-important in comparison to the dracoknight. He seemed tired, given how he was propping himself up with his lance. "You're making me nervous."

"Oh, you're nervous, are you?" the merchant spun around and twisted his head at the man, definitely not amused by the statement. "I feel like my heart's gonna beat right out of my chest!"

"Get ahold of yourself, man," the dracoknight gave Frenley a firm pat on the shoulder. "This was all your idea, and you know what happens if this doesn't work out."

Note that the dracoknight hefted up his axe right there. I was a little surprised to see this. Up until then, I'd been suspecting that Frenley was paying off the soldiers to help him with his scheme, but now it seemed that he was actually in debt to them. Perhaps he needed the ransom money in order to keep out of jail.

"Ack!" Frenley jumped back from the brandished weapon with a most frightened look on his face before quickly doing what he could to regain his wits. "N-N-No need to g-get violent! Those idiot boys will be here any minute with our gold! Just you wait and see!"

Thankfully, Sothe spared me anymore melodrama by taking the initiative and taking this moment to go ahead and throw open the front door to announce his presence. I furrowed my eyes at him, wondering what exactly he had in mind for a distraction.

"Aha! See! See!" Frenley yelled frantically to the soldiers as Sothe steadily walked across the empty space where chairs would sit on auction day. "He's here! I told you he'd come!"

"Aye, there he is," the dracoknight agreed, looking down at the thief. Sothe stopped in the middle of the floor, much to my relief. I was kind of worried he might get to close. The last thing I needed right now was for them to attack him because of his carelessness.

"Where's his gold, though?" the other soldier stood up straight, and I suddenly got a knot in my chest. I didn't know how Sothe was going to handle this, and it was making edgy. If somebody had snuck up on me here, I'd probably have jumped straight through the roof.

"That's a good question," the dracoknight instantly got agitated, his axe still hefted to represent the business he thought he meant.

"Y-Yes! Where's the gold, lad?" Frenley asked, his voice cracking under the weight of his predicament. "Y-You read the note, right? You don't get the girl without the gold. No gold, no girl. Th-That's how it works!"

He added a few crazed laughs in there, but I'd seen enough. With a lift of the leg, I was up and behind the lance soldier.

With a firm and fast swipe of my hand, I snatched his lance right out of his distracted grip. I then spun myself around with it and brought the blunt end against the fool's helmet. The lance was decently heavy, but that only played to my advantage. He hit the floor like his head was magnetized to it, allowing me to toss the sharp end of the lance into the dracoknight's unprotected midsection… or, at least, that's what I had wanted to do.

"YAAGH!"

Had the man not yelled out, I probably wouldn't have noticed that he was running at me in time. It also helped that I'd been keeping up with my dodging practice. He brought his axe downward at me, which was extremely slow and easy to slide out of the way of. Still, he was too close for the lance, so I drew out my knife and stepped on the back of his leg. This brought him to his knees, giving me an easy shot at his neck. I lodged my knife there and kicked what was left away. Next came the fumbling soldier on the floor. Leaving him alive, much to my internal chagrin, probably wouldn't end well for us. Still having his lance, I didn't hesitate to sink it straight into his exposed spinal region. He twitched a little before becoming still.

…Yeah. I was killing people like that. I don't know what it was, but I guess it was kind of like a bad habit for me. Once I'd started in Toha, I just kept on going. Not to say I didn't feel remorse. No, I felt remorse. I just knew that letting it get to me wasn't the way to go about it. I was smarter than that. It wasn't like I was good enough at anything else to pass as a tradesman.

Of course, saying it like that suggests that I was good at killing. No… _Volke_ was good at killing. Me? I was sloppy. If I'd really had talent, I would have thrown my knife into the dracoknight's skull before coming and snapping the other soldier's neck.

…

Shit. Listen to me ramble about such a dismal thing. Where was I?

"Jill?" I instantly turned to make sure our damsel in distress was alright. There was a distinct yet muffled grunt from behind the bag that sounded enough like Jill for me to be relieved, so I quickly went about untying her.

"Not so fast, you pig trough!"

I glance up from behind Jill to see Sothe holding a visually stunned Frenley by the collar.

"You've got some explaining to do," the thief informed the man in the most threatening tone I'd ever heard him utter- at the time, that is. "Why'd you do it, huh? We never did anything to you!"

"Aaaagh!" the merchant screamed like an absolute piss bag as I finally got the bag off of Jill's head. Her red hair flew up and out like a flame as she spat out a gagging cloth and began to pull rigorously at the rope binding her to a chair.

"Untie me, dammit!" she swore, directing every ounce of rage she had towards the increasingly unfortunate Frenley.

"I-I-I'm sooorrrrrrryyyyyy!" he wailed like a defeated child, tears running sloppily down his face. Sothe eventually dropped him, and he fell to the stage floor in a heap. "I neeeeded the moneeeyyyyy!"

As the man cried, we eventually all stopped and just stared at him for a little while.

"I owed those soldiers money, and they said they'd throw me in jail or worse if I didn't pay! So I arranged to her kidnapped so I could ransom her back to you! B-But now you've killed them! I'm free! But still, I'm soooo sooorryyyyyyy! Pleeeeease don't kill meeeee! I'll do anythiiiiiing!"

That was the last I heard, thank goodness. We'd untied Jill and made a run for it somewhere in the middle of that tantrum.

With everyone safe, we decided to hit the snazzy side of the markets in search of something to splurge on. It was a much-needed activity, if you ask me. Very helpful in forgetting the fact that I'd just committed double homicide against two members of Begnion's proud military.

"I honestly don't know how to thank you guys," Jill shook her head as we walked through the streets at the cusp of sunset. We'd gone back to base and dropped off gear before headed out, making us look more regular kids than battle-hardened mercenaries. That was the way I preferred it, most definitely. Every moment where I could be a regular kid hanging out with friends was certainly something to cherish.

"Don't worry about it," I pass it off, not wanting to impose on somebody who'd spent the day captured. I was honestly surprised how well she was taking it. I'd expected her to be pretty hard on herself about it, but, then again, who was I to say that I knew how Jill's mind worked? Maybe she could actually be happy for once. Maybe she was just being happy now and would be really tough on herself later. Maybe not! I don't know. People are complicated.

"I dunno, Jill," Sothe smirked his smirk. "I can think of a way for you to thank me."

Did I mention that Sothe could be a bit of a cheeky little bastard sometimes?

"Ugh! Not if you were the last guy on Tellius!" Jill rejected the advance with a swift punch to the thief's arm. I managed to laugh at this, which was nice. Laughs were few and far between in those times.

Before we could get anything else in, however, Jill's attention suddenly locked on to something behind Sothe's head. She promptly pushed him out of the way and made tracks for the store window we had been passing by. Naturally, we followed her to see what had caught her eye.

And there it was, sitting in the window of the most expensive clothing store in all of Tellius. T'was a dress, red as rubies with, of all things, a green dragon sewn across the torso. If there were ever a dress that Jill would _need_, it was this one. I looked at her as she all but applied her face to the window. She was gobsmacked- absolutely in awe of the thing. Quite the sight to see, honestly. I never thought anything would get to the wyvern rider in such a way. Surprising me left and right, she was.

"That's a beautiful dress," Sothe gave the offhanded comment that would doom us all.

"_Beautiful?!_" Jill nearly had a stroke. "It's perfect! How much is…?"

She didn't even complete her sentence. Looking down at the price, which was so handily listed right below the display, she instantly saw a number that made her heart drop. "Five hundred gold?! For a dress?! That's… That's robbery!"

"I could afford that."

Damn my blasé tongue! Damn it and its ability to blurt out the truth at such casual times! It was indeed the truth that I could afford the dress. I'd made quite the income during my time as a valet, and five hundred was just the amount I'd pulled for my personal satchel.

"Huh?" Sothe scoffed at me. "You told me earlier you only had a hundred."

"I lied," I divulged. Sadly, I'd long since made a promise to myself never to talk about how much money I really had. Not since that guy had stolen two hundred dollars from me back in high school…

Anyway, I looked at Jill, who was looking up to me like a damn puppy. This was where I realized that, in spite of her often cold, warriorlike exterior, Jill was also the daughter of a wealthy landowner. She was a lord's daughter in her bones, and any lord's daughter knew exactly how to get what she wanted. Just bat those long eyelashes and BAM! She's got it.

It also didn't help that I was a total rube.

"Uh… Yeah, no problem," I waved her off before headed towards the shop's door.

And that's the story of how I bought a dress! Yes, it was for Jill! No, it wasn't romantic or action-packed, sorry. Are you happy now? I was trying to eat something before you showed up…

What?! You don't believe that either?! What the hell do you want from me? More action?! Sweet Jeebus Lorenzo! Isn't it you're bedtime yet? Where's your mother?! Robin, come get your freaking kid!

* * *

**Two months later, this thing still crawls forward.**

**Have no fear! Next time will feature the next game chapter. It's almost time for Arrow to come into his own with the mercenaries. He's been pussyfooting in the back for long enough, I think. Not to say that he's just going to become a badass or anything (not yet, anyway), but… Yeah.**

**Thanks for reading! Review if it pleases you!**


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